


Shine

by libertyelyot



Category: Ripper Street
Genre: F/M, General and specific evilness, I know I'm going to hell, Nothing non-consensual but might walk the line at times, Victorian-style smut, Which is the best kind of smut, You don't have to tell me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-17 01:34:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 36,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9298292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/libertyelyot/pseuds/libertyelyot
Summary: It is 1892 and Jedediah Shine helms K Division with more ruthless vigour than ever, determined to salvage his reputation after his beating at the hands of Bennett Drake. When the daughter of his nemesis, local councillor Henry Culford, falls like magic into his hands, he recognises a path towards regaining that precious lost respect - and he will not scruple to achieve his end by any necessary means.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I can't apologise enough for this, but I've been re-watching Ripper Street prior to catching series 5 on Amazon Prime and have become horribly obsessed with Jedediah S and his amazing waxed moustache and astonishing pugilistic physique. So I had to write something. This will probably negate season 5 so should be tagged as AU, but perhaps it won't. I haven't decided yet... Anyway, prepare for melodramatic evilness and gravelly snarling all over the shop.

“But you must be wearing your best velvet, Grace.” The woman on the chaise longue slurred her words, allowing her fan to drop listlessly from her fingers to the Turkey-carpeted floor. “In case Lady Weatherley comes to call. You know she promised.”

From the doorway, Grace took in the half-empty decanter on the side table, and its companion, the increasingly familiar little brown bottle of laudanum.

“There have been no calling cards this morning,” said Grace, repeating a well-rehearsed litany. “Lady Weatherley will not come today.”

“Her footman is perhaps lost. These streets…”

Grace watched her mother cast about for her dropped fan a while before giving up and yawning behind her hand instead. Her head, dusty with setting powder, drooped down on to a pink sateen cushion and she shut her eyes.

“Just forty winks,” she murmured. “You will wake me, Grace, when Lady Weatherley is here.”

“Yes, mama.”

Grace waited another five minutes, until her mother’s breathing was deep enough to guarantee that no more words would escape her lips until past tea-time. Then she turned and made her way to the hall.

“Lady Weatherley,” she whispered, shaking her head as she threw her cape over her shoulders and reached for her bonnet.

Lady Weatherley would never call again, not now. No Mayfair lady would venture this far east.

“Miss Grace!”

Lucy the parlourmaid stood at the top of the stairs. Grace clicked her tongue with exasperation at being caught.

“You ain’t going out alone, are you, Miss? You know your pa won’t have it.”

“My ‘pa’, as you call him, need never know. Oh, Lucy, don’t look at me like that. I just need some air. I won’t go beyond the church yard.”

“See you don’t, then, Miss. I knows these streets as you don’t, and I wouldn’t like nothing bad to befall yer.”

“I’ll be perfectly safe, Lucy. Why, it’s broad daylight.”

“That don’t always signify,” she said darkly.

“What if I bring you back something? Ha’porth of comfits from Miss Millicent’s?”

“Ooh, would you? Them’s my favourites.”

“They shall be yours, in return for your silence.”

“Our secret, Miss Grace.”

“Our secret.”

Grace tied tight her bonnet strings and opened wide the great front door.

It was strange to her that they should live in a house every bit as grand and spacious as the one they had been forced to leave behind in Chelsea, and yet it should be marooned here in Limehouse.

Three Colt Street was a little island of gentility, surrounded by the shark-infested seas of poverty and destitution that more accurately characterised the district. Across the cobbles from Grace’s home stood the little Hawksmoor church of St Anne’s, and to the north of it lay her father’s workplace, the Limehouse Council building.

These were safe havens, but to the north, east, west and south of here was territory unmapped in Grace’s experience. She knew that the Thames and its great docks and wharves were very close – when the wind was in the right direction, she could smell the summer stink of the river and hear the creaking of the great winches that transported goods from ship to shore. Early every morning, she would wake to the trudge of hundreds of feet, on their way to wait at the dock gates to be chosen for a day’s casual labour.

She stood for a while, looking up and down the street, trying to decide where her wanderings might take her – for she had no intention of honouring her promise to remain in the precincts of the church.

In the event, the sound of laughter from the top of the street made her mind up for her. She would go where there was most in the way of life, that precious thing she wanted so much to see.

Very soon, she found herself on the West India Dock Road. With fascination, she examined each shop front and kerbside stall. The shops here were so different from those in the West End, and the people so differently dressed. Drab they might be, but there were sights unknown on the streets of Chelsea. People from far countries, their skins brown or yellow, their languages so deliciously unfamiliar, passed her by with baskets of bread or fish or little bags of spices.

A volley of whistles from a group of men idling outside a corner public house sent her scurrying quickly, further down the street, where she found herself on the fringes of a crowd, some of whom bore placards.

Caught between the mild jostling and the ugly leering she had escaped, she chose the jostling.

“What is afoot?” she asked a middle-aged woman with a shawl, hood-like, over her head.

“You don’t know? Galbraith’s offices is just over there.” She spat on the floor to illustrate her opinion of this personage.

“Galbraith?”

“What, you just off the boat?” The woman looked her up and down with suspicion. “Galbraith, girl. Him what owns most of the houses by the Cut. Been running ‘em down for months – no repairs, no clean water. Putting up the rents far above what a body can afford. There’ll be cholera back in these streets soon, mark my words.”

“Oh, Galbraith.” Grace recalled some dinner table talk of Papa’s regarding this man. “My father told me. He wishes to sell the land to a developer.”

“But first he has to get the tenants out.” The woman nodded. “And they ain’t got nowhere to go, so he’s trying to force it. But we ain’t having it.”

“So you shouldn’t,” said Grace spiritedly.

The woman looked her up and down.

“What’s a princess like you doing round here anyway? Give you fourpence for your cape – finest quality wool, that is.” She fingered the hem. Grace had an uncomfortable urge to snatch it away from the woman’s grubby fingers, but she knew it would be unmannerly, so she bore it as best she could.

“Get your hands off her, Ma Kenner,” said a good-humoured lad of about Grace’s age. “She’ll have the clothes off your back if you let her. Here.” He offered her a battered metal flask. “Fortifications for our new comradess-in-arms.”

“Oh.” Grace sniffed at the bottleneck, detecting spirits of the kind her father favoured. Brandy, most probably. She looked up at the lad, who smiled encouragement.

“Get it down you, girl. It’ll give you fire in your belly.”

His friends, more young people, both male and female, laughed and urged her on.

Grace was intoxicated already, by their easy acceptance of her and this new and exciting thing called cameraderie. She was a warrior on the barricades! A revolutionary!

She tipped it and took a sip. The boy was right about it giving her fire in her belly. She coughed slightly and laughed, handing the flask back.

“Come on, let’s get nearer the front,” said one of the girls in the group, and they proceeded by means of elbows and feet to shove their way forward, Grace bobbing in their wake.

Many sips from the flask later, Grace was at the front of the crowd, bellowing and catcalling every bit as lustily as anyone there. These people might be rough and rude to look at, but they had hearts of English oak! They were her brothers and sisters! She would fight and die by their side!

She joined them in scooping up handfuls of the road’s detritus – cinders, mostly, fallen from the morning coal wagons – and flinging them at the window panes of Galbraith’s concern. Some of the boys threw drying horse dung, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to that extreme.

The baying reached fever pitch, and the brandy melted what remained of her circumspection. Finding a large chunk of masonry at her feet, she picked it up and hurled it with all her might. The resounding crash of broken glass unleashed a wild cheer in the crowd, swiftly followed by the keening of whistles.

“Cut it! Coppers!”

She found herself pitched and tossed this way and that as the crowd fled in all directions. Dizzy with brandy and hurly-burly, she had no idea which way was home, or indeed where she actually was. She staggered up on to the kerb and fell forward, right at the feet of a uniformed officer of K Division.

*

Detective Inspector Jedediah Shine, returning from a meeting with one of his most useful informants, picked up the custody log and ran a cursory eye down its list of all-too-familiar malefactors. The same pickpockets, whores and drunks featured over and again, day in, day out.

One name, however, caused his eye to stop, then widen.

“What’s the story here?” he asked the desk sergeant, jabbing a finger at the name ‘Grace Culford’.

“Criminal damage, affray,” intoned the sergeant.

“Yes, sergeant, I can read a charge sheet. I mean, why is she entangled in such?”

The sergeant shrugged. “We have had no time to question her as yet. Busy morning. She was part of a crowd causing a ruckus outside Galbraith’s.”

“Galbraith’s? Was she indeed?” The Inspector’s voice dropped low, always a bad sign for somebody, in the sergeant’s estimation. “Bring her to my office.” He strode off, pausing to call back, “With tea, if you please.”

*

The enchantment of the brandy had long worn off, and Grace was left with misery, nausea, terror and a headache that threatened to cleave her skull in twain.

What _had_ she been thinking? _Why_ would she throw a rock at an office window? And how on earth was she going to face Papa? It would get into the papers. Perhaps she would end up in prison. What was the sentence for this kind of crime? Oh, where was that bucket? But she couldn’t go near the bucket. Things weren’t quite that grim, yet.

The three other occupants of the female cell had been surprisingly solicitous.

“First time in the bang-up, dearie?” said one, although it was hard to make out her words, for she lacked such a great many teeth. “You’re a tender little thing, I bet they pay good coin for you.”

Grace merely blinked with incomprehension.

“I do not think…”

“Wait till you get to our time of life,” added a woman in a most startlingly low-cut bodice. “Price of a bed in the dosser is all you can hope for.”

“That’s if Jack don’t get you first,” said the third, taking off a ginger wig and scratching underneath it. “Fuckin’ lice.”

The sound of a key in the lock diverted their attention.

“Oh, let me out, dearie.” “I ain’t done nothing.” “Give you anything you like, darlin’, if you’ll let us slip out the back way. Even let you slip _up_ the back way, if you catch my drift.”

Raucous cackles, but Grace didn’t understand the joke.

“Stand easy, ladies,” said the desk sergeant. “I’m here for the young lady over in the corner. If you’ll come with me, Miss?”

“Oh…” Grace hauled herself to her feet and tried to smooth down her hair. If only she had a mirror. “Am I to be cross-questioned? Are you setting me free?”

“The Inspector wants a word, is all,” said the sergeant, locking the door after her as she stepped out into the relative freedom of the station.

“A word?” Grace fought to get her scattered wits back about her. “The Inspector.”

Something stirred in her memory.

“Oh…you do not mean…not Inspector Shine? By any chance?”

“Well, since this is his shop, I do not know who else you would expect me to mean.”

What was it Papa had called him? _A man who could not choose whether to be more venal or bestial, and so chose to be both._ It was not a promising advertisement. Her heart, already hammering near the top of her throat, threatened to bolt via her mouth.

At the door, the sergeant paused briefly, his tone softening.

“I will bring tea,” he said. “And…” He spoke low, glancing at the office door with some trepidation. “I will always be within earshot. Should you need…” He coughed, and knocked on the door. “Miss Culford, Inspector.”


	2. Chapter 2

The man behind the desk – the Inspector of grim legend - stubbed out a slim cheroot as Grace was shown into the room.

Her impression was of far too many patterns and fabrics below the neck, and far too much macassar oil and moustache wax above it. The effect was not genteel, although the clothes were of fine cut and material, and probably expensive. In her opinion, one should opt for houndstooth _or_ windowpane check, and never both at once.

“Miss Culford,” he said, indicating a chair on the opposite side of his desk. “What about that tea, Merton?”

“On its way, sir.”

The sergeant shut the door behind him, and Grace turned to look after him, a little desperately. She had the strongest instinct that alone with this man was not a good place to be.

“Well.” Shine forced her attention back to him. His lip was curled in what she supposed to be a smile intended to put her at her ease, but something feral in his narrow green eyes doomed the effort to failure. “We are honoured, are we not?”

“Will I go to gaol?” she blurted. “I am very sorry for what I did, and I have no idea now why I did it. I think the moment swept me along to such an extent that I quite forgot myself. I promise you that I represent no danger of any kind to anyone and will never, ever be so foolish again, if you could just see your way to…”

“Hush, hush.” Shine held up a hand, bending forward, a gesture that should have been avuncular but somehow wasn’t. He reminded her of a wolf, inspecting its kill. “Let’s come to that presently, shall we?”

_I am Red Riding Hood, alone in the forest._

She swallowed.

Merton re-entered with the tea tray, providing a welcome respite for the short time he took to place it on the table, arrange the milk jug and sugar bowl and serve the beverage to everyone’s satisfaction.

“I cannot stomach black tea,” she remarked nervously, noting that the Inspector eschewed the milk and sugar.

He made no reply to this, but simply watched her over the rim of his steaming cup. She stared down into her lap.

“What is your age, Miss Culford?”

“I will be eighteen at Michaelmas.”

“Eighteen at Michaelmas,” he repeated contemplatively. He took another sip. “At such an age, foolishness is not unheard of.”

“Then it might be excused?”

“Well, you will have to let me think on that, Miss Culford. It falls to me to keep these streets safe from such rowdies as yourself.” He smiled briefly. She had no way of knowing whether he was serious or teased her. Her stomach knotted, the tea lying uncomfortably in her belly. “What if I were to send word to your father at the council offices that I have you here?”

“Please don’t,” she whispered, her teacup rattling against its saucer.

“Does he ill-treat you?” Shine raised an eyebrow.

“No, of course he does not, but…I would rather bear any penalty myself than expose him to shame. He is a man of high principle and I…” Her throat closed, a sob lurking halfway down. She swallowed it hard. “I would disappoint him so.”

“High principle, yes,” said Shine with the trace of a sneer. “More than he can afford, I’ll wager. You came to Limehouse from…?”

“Chelsea, Inspector. Eighteen months since.”

“A reduction in circumstances.”

“Father’s stocks did not yield what was promised. We could not afford to stay.”

“As the story was told in the papers. Excuse me for asking – one cannot always rely on the veracity of the press. I like to know the truth of things.” He leant back in his chair, steepling his fingers. A heavy signet ring caught Grace’s attention. “Your father, Miss Culford, is no admirer of mine.”

“I know,” she admitted, looking away from him.

“I am a man much misunderstood. It is intriguing to me that he has come to Limehouse from a district so far distant and set himself straightaway to achieving my ruin. I am yet to understand from whence his antipathy proceeds.”

“Oh, he heard all about you from his friend, Inspector Abberline.”

“Abberline.” Shine slammed down his teacup in a kind of vindicated triumph. “And how comes your father to know our dear retired chief?”

“They attend the same Lodge together.”

Shine clapped his hands and shook his head, his face contorted with bitter satisfaction.

“I knew it. Freemasonry.”

“It was Inspector Abberline who found us our new home,” added Grace.

“Was it indeed? Well, I should not expect you to side against your dear father, but I will tell you that I am targeted by these Freemasons on account of my Irish catholic blood. They will not have me because my birth makes me unacceptable to them. What do you think of that?”

“That is…unkind.”

“Unkind it most certainly is, my dear, and worse. I am as true and dutiful an Englishman as any of them, but they look upon me as dirt beneath their feet. Well, Jedediah Shine shall not be trodden down by any man’s boot, and he will not be brought low by your father’s little secret gang. They may play with their passwords and rituals. Meanwhile I abide here, keeping you all from being murdered in your beds.”

Grace had nothing to say to this, so she waited for his ranting to blow itself out, sipping at her tea and watching him through lowered eyelids.

“Your father does me wrong,” he said, his agitation passing, replaced again by a conciliatory mask.

“I am sorry for it, if so,” she said. “May I be permitted to go home now?”

Shine locked his gaze with hers until she took fright and focused again on her lap.

“Let me see,” he said slowly. “I should like to be a friend to you, Miss Culford.”

She stiffened, glancing quickly at him then away again. This was an odd thing for him to say.

“And as your friend,” he continued, “it would not behove me to act outside your best interests, now, would it?”

“I…suppose not.”

“The question is whether those best interests are properly served by letting you off scot-free without so much as a warning.”

“Then give me a warning,” she begged, in fresh agonies of suspense.

“I will give you better than a warning,” he offered. “I suppose you do not know too much about the penalties for drunkenness?”

“No.” She hung her head. “I swear I shall never drink again, please believe me.”

“While the most pernicious of our drunks can expect to find themselves dealt with according to the full severity of the law, other options are available to those who pose a lesser threat to our streets.”

She wrung her hands in miserable silence. It was not pleasant to hear herself referred to as some common street drinker. Yet she had been drunk in the streets, so what else could she be?

“In some cases, they will report, at given intervals, to a volunteer missionary, who will endeavour to keep them on the straight. This has proved surprisingly effective in certain of our wards. The missionaries will report them back to us in the event of relapse, but such relapse is by no means assured. I have known several men conquer their addictions in this manner.”

“You want to send me to a missionary?”

“Not quite, Miss Culford. In your case, I intend to _be_ that missionary.”

“You?” She gave him her blankest stare, trying to quell the rising horror within her breast.

“I intend to take a personal interest in your welfare,” he said.

“You really needn’t…”

“Oh, yes I do. I owe it to your father, shall we say. I promise you no word of this shall ever reach his ear, if you will undertake to let me keep an eye on you.”

“It is not necessary, I promise you.”

He pointed a long finger at her.

“You are all promises and vows and swearing, but I know the value of such words, girlie. I hear them every day, from the lowest scum in the city. I will see for myself that your promises are kept.”

Knowing that he meant what he said, she gave up the fight.

“What do you have in mind?” she asked dully. “You know I cannot leave the house alone, and I am not permitted to stray beyond the top of St Anne’s churchyard.”

“If only you had kept to those rules today, eh?” He smiled hatefully. “If you cannot come to me, then I shall come to you. Monday night at midnight, look for a hansom cab on the corner of your street. Come out to me, and we will spend a little time in one another’s company.”

“Leave the house at night! I cannot…”

“I think you can, and if you wish what has passed today to remain between us, you will. Midnight on Monday, Miss Culford. I will wait for you.”

“What if I am caught?”

“You really should not fear your father more than you fear me. Run along now, before I change my mind and have you up before the magistrates in the morning.”

*

The days that followed were difficult, almost feverish.

Grace tried at times treating it as a dream-memory, an insubstantial thing that meant nothing and would lead to nothing. He had been amusing himself with her, that was all, and no hansom cab would draw up on the corner on Monday night.

At other times she lay on her bed quaking inwardly at what might be to come. What could he possibly want from her?

_Let me keep an eye on you_.

The phrase repeated itself in her mind, over and over.

“But there is nothing for him to keep an eye _on_ ,” she told herself distractedly. “I sit in this house all day, reading endlessly, playing the piano indifferently, sewing badly. Why should a high-ranking police officer make such dullness his business?”

Yet for all the fear and dread, there was something else that she feigned not to recognise – a kind of excitement. Here, at least, was _life_. Secret assignations, midnight hansom cabs, disreputable moustachioed men – it was as good as a three-decker from Mudie’s.

Many a time she almost blurted something to Lucy, who had been so curious and concerned when she had returned home that day, comfit-less and without her bonnet.

She even listened keenly to her father’s droning talk of local politics at the dinner table, hoping to isolate the name Shine from his long list of Limehouse miscreants and question him further. However, he did not name Shine directly, although there were vague mutterings about corruption in high places and the impending fall of the mighty.

On Monday evening, she could not sew a stitch without pricking herself, so she put away her workbasket and sat instead in the window, a candle to hand, staring out into the street.

Her mother had been in bed, passed out, since dinner and her father was working in his study. Midnight was yet two hours away. She looked from the clock to the street to the clock, watching the minute hand creep around.

_What if he comes?_

_What if he doesn’t come?_

_Which would be worse?_

“I am for my bed,” said her father, sticking his head around the door and making her jump. “You are up late, Grace.”

“I am not tired,” she said. “Leave me be, I will try and read myself into somnolence.”

“As you will. Goodnight, my love.”

But she could not think of looking at a book now. It was twenty five minutes past eleven. The pubs were throwing out those who were not favoured enough to stay for a lock-in. Men and women laughed and whooped and sang along the cobbles. Some of them chased each other in jest, others performed clumsy dances, their arms linked in twos and threes. One pair pressed themselves against the church railings and kissed and kissed until Grace had to look away, her cheeks stinging red.

Would she ever be kissed like that?

As midnight approached, the street quietened. No more merrymakers, no street hawkers, no lovers in the churchyard. The clouds were low, the moon obscured. One streetlamp flickered, on the corner. Everything else in the street was a pool of black.

As the grandfather clock began to strike twelve, she heard the distant clop of hooves.

“No,” she whispered, but the hooves came closer, and by the time the twelfth chime was struck, a hansom cab stood on the corner of the street.


	3. Chapter 3

The silence of the house roared in Grace’s ears as she slipped on her cloak and tried her very best to open the door without making a sound.

She had thought, for two full minutes, about staying in the drawing room and waiting for the cab to leave, but then the idea that perhaps the Inspector would come and rap at the door spurred her to meet his demand. The shame of her arrest was still very raw in her mind, and the prospect of her father finding her less than the impeccable daughter he believed her to be was insupportable.

She walked gingerly across the cobbles, looking back with each step at her parents’ bedroom window. No light could be seen, and the heavy curtains remained in place.

When she was no more than three steps away from the cab, its black door opened by an invisible hand, inviting her in.

“Good evening, Miss Culford.”

The Inspector’s voice preceded her first sight of him. Those laconic, husky tones could belong to no other man.

She stepped up and into the cab, seating herself on the very edge of the bench. She did not fully close the door, leaving it on the latch in case a swift escape might be called for.

Inspector Shine noted the way she held herself distant and patted the space beside him.

“A little closer, if you please, or do you wish our conversation to be overheard?”

Reluctantly, she shifted a couple of inches in his direction. He was wearing a strong-smelling cologne of some kind. It mixed with the pomade in his hair to create a rather overwhelming blend.

“What is it you want of me, Inspector? I cannot stay long.” She glanced through the window, seeking her parents’ window again.

“Your parents are abed, I take it.”

“Yes, but…”

“Shh, but nothing. You are very nervous, I perceive.”

“I am not accustomed to being alone in hansom cabs with strange men.”

“That I should hope not.”

She almost cried out as he reached across and took one of her clenched fists from her lap. She tried to wrench it back, but he was far stronger than her and held fast until she realised the futility of resistance. One by one, he uncurled her fingers until her trembling hand lay in his palm, held tight at the wrist.

“What are you about, sir?” She tried to sound firmly indignant, but the tremor in her voice betrayed her.

“Did you never go to the fair and have your palm read by a gypsy woman?” Shine traced the tip of one finger along each ridge and crease.

Grace, convulsed with fear and a strange inner fizzing, felt her arm slacken in surrender.

“I…may have done…”

“And did that gypsy woman tell you that you would meet a tall, dark stranger who would be the harbinger of your destiny?”

His thumb moved to her wrist, stroking slowly and hypnotically across its slender width.

Grace’s hectic breathing calmed, even as she was consumed by this new fluttering sensation. She could not have admitted it to herself, but the way the Inspector toyed with her hand introduced her to a troubling order of pleasure she had not thus far experienced.

“I think every girl is told the same,” she breathed.

“In your case, the gypsy woman was prescient,” said Shine, continuing his ministrations. “Because I am that tall, dark stranger, and your destiny may soon enough be revealed to you.”

“I don’t know…how so?”

He closed his hand around hers, so that she felt every iota of their great difference in size and strength.

“Has your father spoken of me, these past few days?” he asked.

“Not as such. That is, he has not mentioned your name.”

“But?”

Grace hesitated.

“You intend for me to be your spy? Working against my own father?”

“You are looking at it through the wrong lens, girlie. You will not be working against your father so much as you will be working for me. To keep Limehouse safe and all well in our little corner of the world.”

“He tells me very little, truly…”

“Then you may draw him out. Engage him in conversation over the morning papers. I must know, Miss Culford, how best to defend myself against those who seek to bring me down. Your father and his circle would like to see one of their Freemason pals in my place, but Limehouse would be the worse for it. Is that what you wish for?”

Grace tried again to extricate herself from his grasp, but to no avail.

“I do not know enough about it. I do not know who has the right of it.”

“I have kept these streets in order for four years; you may ask anybody what their condition was before I returned from Hong Kong. They will all tell you the same – that Limehouse is a safer place now than it ever was. You, dear Miss Culford, _you_ have it in your power to prevent such murders and riots as might take place if I am deposed. Think of it, Grace. Lives, held in this little hand.”

He raised their hands together, fingers interwoven, then placed her knuckles gently against his lips, watching her with ferocious intentness.

“I…I do not know…”

He released her hand, but her relief was short-lived as he reached for her face and, with infinite gentleness, brushed a non-existent hair from her brow.

“I am placing my faith in you, Grace,” he said, in tones so soft and caressing that they felt like a kiss. “I will see you here again, at the same time next week.”

“Then I may go?” she stammered, tilting her face away from his solicitous fingers.

He nodded, his eyes burning her so that she had to look elsewhere.

“Goodbye,” she whispered, launching herself out of the cab and running back over the cobbles, careless now of who might see or hear her.

It wasn’t until she lay safe on her bed that she was able to draw breath.

*

Disturbing thoughts and visions beset Grace throughout the following week.

Unnerved by the encounter with Shine, she tried to analyse it, only to be led into the same infuriatingly blind alleys. He wanted her as a spy. He wanted to use her against her father. But then, why was he so…?

She shivered.

It was not the betrayal of her father, nor her unwillingness to be dragged into the political vortex swirling around Inspector Shine, that perturbed her the most.

It was the way she could not help but thrill to the memory of his touch and his words. She opened her palm a hundred times a day and tried to envision how his fingers had looked, moving along those ingrained lines. She thought of how his lips had felt on her knuckles, and wondered guiltily how they would feel against her mouth. The moustache would tickle, the stubble would burn, but…

No, it was not to be thought of!

And besides, Inspector Shine was in no way the kind of man she had ever dreamed of. She had long had a vision of a fine and sober young man, apple-cheeked and hale but also sensitive, perhaps with the soul of a poet. He would read to her by the fire, and they would go to pleasure gardens and walk through meadows, and they would understand one another on a profound spiritual level.

It was absurd to think that this man, old enough to be her father, with his loud clothes and patina of the mean streets could ever be attractive to her. He was repulsive, in fact. She stood in no danger of falling under his spell.

Of course she didn’t.

She tried, all the same, to draw her father out over the breakfast table, tentative though her efforts were.

“I have seen in the paper that there was a man stabbed by the docks yesterday,” she said. “Do you think his assailant will be found?”

“That is up to the police, of course,” said her father. “They are competent enough in these matters.”

“You think them competent? A force for good?”

He eyed her with puzzlement.

“The police? Of course.”

“Only I thought you said…there was some difficulty…with the local constabulary.”

“Ah.” He chewed on his sausage, swallowing it in haste. “Oh, well, yes. The Inspector is a very compromised man, very compromised indeed. He has escaped justice so far, but justice will come, you may count on it. We will find somebody who will dare to speak against him.” He sighed lightly. “One day.”

“You sound as if you have met many obstacles in your pursuit of him.”

“Oh, indeed, a good many. But no man is above justice. In the end, we will run him to earth.”

So Shine was safe for now, thought Grace. Her father and his supporters had no case to bring as yet.

“What,” she asked, coughing a little. “What is the nature of his wrongdoing?”

“Oh, you may let your finger land at random on any crime in the statute book, and he will have committed it at some time. I shall not go into detail, my love – it is not for such delicate ears as yours. Indeed, this entire subject is not fitting. Tell me what you are reading at the moment.”

*

Another Monday came and Grace was quite ill with nerves.

_I cannot go to him_ , she told herself. _My father knows him for an evil man, and my father’s judgement is to be trusted. I cannot put myself against him. It is undutiful and wicked._

Already, she had acted in a way which disgusted her higher moral self, in meeting Shine in the cab the first time. To continue with this underhanded treachery was impossible.

And yet, as she sat up late in the drawing room once more, she felt the unholy lure of him. Just to have him touch her face in that way, once more, just once more…

At half past eleven, she turned off the gaslights and sat in the dark, not daring to even watch by candlelight. When Shine arrived, the house must be in silent blackness. Perhaps he would think that she was ill, or sent away to visit friends.

She made a silent bargain with herself. If he came out of the cab and approached the house, she would go down to intercept him. But if he did not, she would remain here, hidden, until he had the cab drive on.

At midnight, the cab rounded the corner and stood, waiting, so horribly solid and real that Grace could not bear to look at it. She crouched on the floor, one eye peering around the curtain, watching for signs of activity.

The horses stood patiently, the cabbie yawning on his box, but there was no movement from within.

It remained for a full hour, standing there like a manifestation of her most horrid nightmares, while she sat and prayed, with her nails digging into her palms, for it to go away.

As the clock struck one, it lurched into motion.

“Yes,” she whispered to herself. “Thank you, God.”

Her vigil over, she lit a candle and went upstairs to bed, where her lightened heart gave her dreams more pleasant than any she had known since that fateful day on the dock road.


	4. Chapter 4

Limehouse was not a pleasant place to be in the summer.

For Grace, accustomed to opening her Chelsea casements to let in the delicate aroma of honeysuckle and jasmine, curling around her sill, the contrast was almost unbearable.

She stood by her bedroom window for a full twenty minutes on the day following her failure to meet the hansom cab, debating whether to stifle alive or let in the noisome stink and clamourous din of the mews and stews that lay to the rear of Three Colts Lane.

In the end, the heat won out, and she pulled up the sash to let in whatever breeze might relieve the thick stillness of the evening.

She had spent all day in the cool of the scullery with Lucy, finding the humble surroundings less oppressive than the more gracious air of the drawing room. Besides, her mother was being a locquacious drunk today, and she could never stand that.

If she had only admitted it to herself, the scullery was also a safe place to conceal herself from any unwelcome visitors who might descend upon the house today. She had an uneasy sense that Inspector Shine was not the kind of man who would leave her non-appearance at that.

Every knock at the door, every delivery, every heavy footstep outside the area railings made her heart jump and a burning nausea rise swiftly up her throat.

Better to hide out in the scullery and keep Lucy company while she scoured and washed up and peeled and chopped vegetables instead.

Now, as the sun set, she felt calm enough to take up a novel and lie on her bed reading, away from her mother’s grandiloquent recollections of her great days in high society. Poor Papa would have to put up with them instead.

Barely had she reached the third paragraph of her new chapter when strange scrabbling sounds on the wall outside could be heard. Fearing some kind of giant rat, she leapt towards the window to close it – she had seen rats in Limehouse whose size she could scarcely credit.

She let out a loud scream as a face appeared at her window – and not the face of a rat, but that of a skinny, ragged young man. He launched himself through the open sash, knocked the book from Grace’s hand, swiped her dressing table so that all of her bottles and boxes fell in a heap on the floor, and ran out, down the stairs to the front door.

He was out and gone before Grace’s shriek had fully died away.

She heard the door bang at the same time as her father called upstairs.

“Grace, whatever is the matter? Are you well?”

He took in the scene swiftly, calling immediately downstairs for the manservant, Jim, to go and fetch a constable.

“A burglar?” he asked, picking up a powder puff. Lavender scented powder lay in sad little heaps all around it.

“I cannot say,” gasped Grace. “I do not think he took anything, but…”

“Come downstairs; I will pour you a tot of brandy for the shock. We will give a description of this ruffian to the constable and hope they may lay hands on him before he is tempted to return. Did you catch sight of him? Would you know him again? Did you recognise him?”

Grace shook her head at all of these, allowing her father to escort her with an arm around her shoulder down to the drawing room.

“I say, how exciting,” slurred her mother from the chaise. “We were burgled once, at Wimpole Street. Mama’s brilliants…got them back in the end.”

Grace sat sipping her well-meant brandy with reluctance, finding that it reminded her very strongly of that over-indulgent day a fortnight since, which reminder brought Inspector Shine unavoidably to mind.

“Where is Jim with the constable?” fretted Papa, sticking his head out of the open drawing room window. “Oh! Oh, he cannot mean this.”

The indignation in his voice roused both women to their feet, one more unsteadily than the other.

“What is it, Papa?” asked Grace tentatively.

Mr Culford rushed out to the hall.

“That man will not cross my threshold,” he muttered.

Grace put a hand to her mouth, fearing the import of her father’s words.

The door was opened before the knock could be given.

“Surely a constable was available,” boomed Papa. “Why are you come?”

“Summer overstretches us,” drawled an unmistakable voice, causing Grace’s legs to give way and deposit her like a stone back into her chair. “All the boozers and fighters come out of their pits and take their vices to the streets. My constables have their work cut out, Councillor, and so you find me here in their place. You can, of course, wait for one to become available but I fear it will not be soon…”

“No, no, come in, I suppose. My daughter has had a horrible shock, you will treat her with delicacy.”

“Delicacy is my middle name, sir,” averred Shine, appearing in the open doorway behind Papa.

Grace put down her brandy before she spilled it.

“It is an odd one,” she said tremulously. “I have never heard its like, although we did know a boy called Mortification in Chelsea. His parents were temperance campaigners.”

A smile spread slowly beneath Shine’s moustache, following its line to the curled up edges.

“Miss Culford, you have been the victim of a housebreaker this evening, I’m told. Would you care to show me where it happened, and how?”

“Oh.” She shrank back in her chair, afraid to move any closer.

“Is it necessary? Can’t you question her here?” asked Papa.

“I must see the scene for myself. Come with me, if you please, Miss Culford.”

She held herself stiff and immobile.

“I am a busy man. There is unrest on the West India Dock Road again, outside the offices of Mr Galbraith. Councillor, you might be interested to hear of a recent similar incident…”

Grace launched herself from her chair and propelled herself across the room.

“I will show you…” she muttered, keeping her eyes low as she passed Inspector Shine and made for the stairs.

He shadowed her on the ascent, always one step lower, but still managing to loom over her shoulder.

“No, Councillor, you may remain downstairs. It is best if I interview your daughter alone.”

Grace was tempted to throw her father a pleading look, but feared what she might find in the expression of Inspector Shine.

She walked ahead into her room. When he followed her in, Shine pushed the door half-shut.

“Why did you not come to me?” were his first words to her. “I waited. I thought perhaps you were ill but I see that you are not.”

“Inspector,” she said, looking all around for a means of escape and finding none. “There is no longer any reason for us to meet.”

“Forgive me, but I will be the judge of that, little Miss Grace.” He took a step closer, flurrying Grace into rapid speech.

“I have spoken to my father and it is clear from what he says that he and his friends have no means of incriminating you.”

Inspector Shine froze in place.

“He said so? What were his precise words?”

“I do not recall exactly, but he spoke of bringing you to justice, and when I asked how close he might be to that aim, he was very despondent and admitted that as yet they had found nobody to speak in their behalf.”

“Are you telling me true, my girl? I flatter myself that I know a liar when I see one, but perhaps you have a gift in that direction.”

“I am not a liar!”

“Well, I see by the colour in your cheeks that you are not.” He reached out, putting a hand to one of the rosy spots. She flinched but could not move away. “You could have told me this last night. Saved us both a deal of bother.”

“You put that wretch up to this.”

“You let me down, girl. I had to show you that I am not to be trifled with.”

“I know it. I have served you in the way you asked. Please, release me from this bond.”

He took a deep and contemplative breath, looking around the room, his eye settling on the pile of books by the bed.

“I had you down for a reader of novels,” he said with some professional satisfaction.

“You are, after all, a detective,” said Grace sulkily, feeling trapped in the glare of Shine’s attention. “I suppose you read those horrid crime stories?”

“I do not find myself at leisure to read a great deal,” said Shine. “I have read _On Murder_ by Thomas de Quincy. A local case, the Ratcliff Highway murders. Even now, we have three cranks a month come to the station claiming to offer a solution. I will confess, I should like to be the man to put that case to bed, but I doubt it can happen now.” He paused to sniff. “But such material is not to your taste, I’ll wager.”

“I prefer a gothic romance.”

“An escape from your mundane reality,” suggested Shine, and he was so close to the truth of it that defensive anger flared within her. “You can deny it if you want,” he continued, watching her narrowly. “But you are kept here in a gilded cage. There is no way out for you but marriage, and since you have no fortune, it is most likely that you will be immured here for life, tending to your dipsomaniac mother until your father passes on his debts to you.”

“How dare you, sir!”

“Watching life pass you by from your drawing room window. I wonder if, one day in your lonely middle years, you’ll ever wish a hansom cab might stop on the corner.”

“Go. Please, just leave.”

“I am on my way. But before I go…” He took out a folded piece of paper from his waistcoat pocket and pressed it into her palm. “Here is my home address. I am best found here. If you ever seek an escape from your cage…”

He made her fingers close around the little square of paper, holding her hand in his.

“I am your friend, Miss Culford, even if you do not know it. I hope you will remember.”

He turned and left the room.

Grace, clinging tightly to the banisters to still her trembling, heard Shine’s parting words to her father.

“Nothing stolen, and the description your daughter gave did not uncover a distinguishing mark. I shall be surprised if we turn anything up – I shall, however, question those who might have seen him in the area. Perhaps we can avoid a recurrence of this distressing event. Good evening, sir.”

*

For days afterwards, Grace lay rapt on her bed while strange passions pitched and tossed inside her.

“Oh, I have a fever,” she moaned to herself, unfolding and reading the little piece of paper a hundred times a day, then putting away in her bodice, next to her heart. “I am lost.”

One evening, her father came in from his Lodge meeting in a state of barely-suppressed excitement.

“We have him,” he proclaimed, standing in the drawing room door with his hands clapped together. “I do believe we finally have him.”

“Have whom?” asked Grace, her stomach boiling like a cauldron.

“Shine! We have turned up a fellow who will testify against him. A Chinaman, involved in the opium trade.”

“A…witness? To what?”

“He is not himself a witness, but he knows a man who was, and he will give that man’s testimony in court as his own.”

“As his own? So, he will pretend under oath that this hearsay is his first-hand account?”

“My love, sometimes the means justify the end. It is worth this small economy with the truth to send that blackguard to the rope.”

“It is perjury,” said Grace, trembling. “And you know my thoughts on capital punishment.”

“You are soft-hearted, and it does you credit…”

“It is judicially sanctioned murder, and it makes you no better than him.”

“Grace! You dare speak to me like that. Come back here this instant!”

“I need some air,” she gasped, bolting through the front door and running headlong into the ill-lit depths of night time Limehouse.

 


	5. Chapter 5

The address Shine had given Grace was mercifully not far from Three Colt Street. After only a few minutes of picking a swift path along the cobbles, she fetched up outside a large, gloomy, sooty-brick terrace just across Limehouse Cut and past the Rectory Gardens in Commercial Road.

No lights were lit in any of the windows, which was not too surprising, as it was close to midnight. The street, broad and generous in scope, was still sparsely populated with wandering drunkards and painted ladies on each corner. Cabs rattled by with surprising frequency.

She ran up the steps, out of the way of a gaggle of gin-drinking women in tatty bright red skirts, and hammered hard at the door.

She clung to the railings, waiting and hoping, hammering some more. A flicker in the fanlight made her heart thunder. Somebody with a lamp, coming to open the door.

It was opened by a querulous-faced woman in middle age, wrapped in a heavy cotton robe.

“If you’re after the Inspector, you’re best going to the station,” she said. “He’s been called out there for something or other.” She paused. “Well? Must be urgent, the way you was knocking seven bells out of the door.”

“It’s…it’s personal. He told me to come here.”

She cocked her head to one side. “Told you, did he? Gave you this address? Well, I suppose you’d better come in and wait, then. Though I can’t say as I’ll wait up with you. I need my beauty sleep.”

“Are you…?” The question strangled Grace before she could ask it. “You’re not by any chance…”

“The name’s Mrs Laverack. I’m the landlady of these premises.”

“Oh, oh, yes, yes, of course you are. Thank you. Thank you so much.” Grace followed the lady into a dark little hallway, then a small sitting room at the back of the house.

“Don’t know what you’ve got to thank me for,” grumbled Mrs Laverack. “I’ll leave the lamp here for you. Keep quiet or I’ll have them on the top floor after me. Still, if they wanted a quiet life they didn’t ought to move into a house with a copper in it, did they?” She put the lamp down on a small table, using its dim light to peer closely at Grace. “You’re white as a sheet, dearie. Tot of rum might help to settle you.”

“Oh…I’m quite well…thank you.”

But she took the little tumbler of dark liquid and sipped at it, needing its fortification. Where was Inspector Shine? If only he would come. In her imagination he lay in shackles in some cell, accused of nameless fabricated crimes by her father’s mysterious Chinaman.

In fact, perhaps she should try to find him out there, to warn him before it was too late…

She rose to her feet and made for the front door, only to rush full-pelt into the manly figure lately entering through that portal.

“Steady now, what’s this?” He held her at arm’s length, his tired eyes lighting with new life as he registered her identity. “Well, well, well. Miss Grace.”

“She said you sent her here,” said Mrs Laverack, standing four square and disapproving by the little sitting room door.

“Indeed I did, Mrs Laverack. Thank you for looking after her for me. Good night.”

Linking his arm with Grace’s, he led her up the stairs, apparently oblivious to the look of disapproval on the landlady’s face. He let them into a set of first floor rooms, the front and entrance of which was a large sitting room that looked out over the Rectory Gardens and beyond to Limehouse Basin.

“I confess myself surprised to see you at this hour,” he said, leading her to one of two armchairs ranged around a fireplace. “Surprised, but not displeased. You look a little wild, Grace. What has happened?”

She opened her mouth to speak, but he waved at her, postponing the explanation, as he opened some cabinets and brought out a decanter and glasses.

“Take a drink with me,” he said, pulling out a stopper with that satisfying low pop Grace always enjoyed.

“Oh…not brandy, I hope. I cannot stomach it any more.”

Shine smiled as he poured.

“After your antics on the Dock Road? Well, perhaps you will reacquire the taste one day. No, this is whiskey, a good Irish malt. Don’t rush it.”

She took the glass and sipped. It wasn’t pleasant, like cordial, but it was an improvement on brandy and the rough dark rum Mrs Laverack had given her.

Her blood warmed and her taut sense of panic began to recede.

“Ohh, I am so glad you are here,” she said. “I thought they might have done something to you.”

“You thought what?” Shine sat down opposite her, eyebrows raised.

“I came here to warn you. My father spoke tonight of a Chinese man who might lie under oath in order to convict you of some terrible crime.”

Shine became very still.

“Your father himself admitted the testimony would be false?”

“Yes. He says the witness would be repeating the words of a dead man, an acquaintance of his. Something to do with the opium trade, I think he said.”

Shine stared unnervingly at her for a few seconds, then stood, putting his glass down on the mantel.

“Forgive me,” he said. “I will need to go out again.”

“I cannot go home!” said Grace quickly. “Please do not make me.”

“I will not make you go home,” Shine promised. “You can stay here. Go into the back room. There is a bed in there; you might try to sleep. I may be a while.”

“I couldn’t sleep. I’m wound up like a clockwork mouse. I wish I knew what to do for the best.”

“Nothing will be made better by your staying up all night,” reproved Shine. “Take yourself off to bed. There are shirts in the wardrobe if you need something more comfortable to wear.”

He reached again for his coat, so recently cast off, and made for the door.

“Please, be careful,” begged Grace, rushing over to intercept him.

His stormy brow softened and he bent to kiss her forehead.

“I have lived this long,” he said. “You need not fear for me.”

She watched in an agony of fretfulness as he left the house and strode off into the dark midnight city. Would he come back? And what if he did not?

What, indeed, if he did?

Her actions tonight must change the course of her life. To go back to her father and face his wrathful interrogation seemed impossible now.

“I will not go back there,” she vowed to herself, draining the whiskey and pouring herself another.

The second drink made her change her mind about her ability to sleep. She wandered, yawning, into the back room and sat down on the bed, enjoying the way the whiskey made everything seem more cheerful and twinkly somehow.

“I am in Inspector Shine’s bed,” she said aloud, falling back on to the mattress with a guilty laugh. “Oh my.”

Somehow she managed to undress and change into a clean white shirt, enjoying its size on her smaller frame. She lay on the bed, taking in her surroundings, trying to make deductions about the Inspector’s tastes and habits from what she could see.

Well, he was clearly unmarried. How absurd that she had thought Mrs Laverack could be his wife!

The room was plain enough with few adornments. A shelf of books that turned out, disappointingly, to be either about boxing or written in Chinese. No pictures, except one she found in a bedside drawer of a very beautiful Chinese lady.

Who was that?

Grace slapped the picture back into the drawer, not wanting to know, or accept its existence.

“ _You_ aren’t here in this bed now, are you?” she murmured, wrapping the blankets about her. Within a few minutes, she was fast asleep.

*

She came to consciousness with an orangey glare behind her eyelids, making her reluctant to open them. She had a mild headache and her mouth was very dry.

And she was not in her own bed.

She sat up suddenly, seeing that the sun had risen and she was, yes, it was true, she hadn’t dreamt it, she was in Inspector Shine’s bedroom.

And, sitting beside the bed with his legs stretched out before him and a sheaf of papers in his hand, was the room’s rightful occupant.

“She awakes,” he said softly, putting aside the papers.

“Oh! How long have you been there?”

“Long enough.”

“But you can’t have slept at all. I have stolen your bed. What time is it?”

He poured some water from a jug and handed it to her.

“No later than six.”

Grace gulped down the water, feeling a little coy at being watched in such an unrefined state.

“I must get word to my parents,” she said, repenting suddenly and enormously of her rash behaviour. “They will be worried half to death.”

“Peace,” said Shine, putting a hand on her forearm to prevent her springing out of the bed. “I have had word sent already.”

Her jaw dropped.

“You have?”

“Dropped a note through the door on my way home. I believe they were still up; at least, there were lights in several windows.”

“Oh, Lord. They will be so… Oh, what shall I do?”

“What do you want to do, Grace?”

She met his gaze, and was held there, all good sense and daughterly duty dropping out of her head for that time.

“I…am not sure.”

He put out a hand and cupped one side of her face, stroking her unbrushed hair back from her temple.

“You came here to save my skin,” he whispered. “Which says to me that you must think that skin worth saving.”

“I do not think…any man…should go to the gallows…”

“So you would go to all this trouble for Jack the Ripper, if we had him, would you?”

She shook her head, swallowing a nervous little laugh. “Of course not. Just…it was about justice…”

“Justice? Here is justice.”

He leant towards her until he was so close he could have only one purpose in mind, but still Grace told herself that he didn’t mean this, that it was a trick or a game or joke and she could laugh it off at any minute, until that minute came, and his lips were fastened on hers and there was no laughing now, nor drawing back, nor telling him that she did not want it.

The kiss was warm and gentle, not over sweet and not – as she had sometimes feared a kiss might be – too wet. The pressure of his lips on hers was just enough to make her crave more, and she pushed back, sighing slightly somewhere down in her throat.

The kiss went on, and she breathed him in. He was smoky, not quite cigar or pipe smoke but something sweeter, a little woody, what was it? Oh, kissing was every bit what the books made you think it was and more. It could be addictive. She could do this for hours on end…oh…just to live for kissing and do nothing more, it would be a life she would love…

A violent rapping on the door jolted them apart, Shine rising to his feet and reaching for his coat.

“Oh…who is that?...you are not going out?”

“Stay in here, my dear,” he warned gruffly. “I will deal with it.”

_Deal with what?_ She wanted to ask, but Shine had already shut the door behind him and stood in the front room, perhaps on his way to anticipate the visitor.

There were loud footsteps on the uncarpeted stairs and another, much louder and nearer, thumping against the door.

“Shine! Let me in! Give me back my daughter!”


	6. Chapter 6

Grace sat on the bed, a fist at her mouth, in an agony of indecision.

Her father was at the door, clearly unmanned by rage and anguish. There was no telling what he might try to do to Inspector Shine. The man who had kissed her. Oh, that kiss. She was still trembling from the force of it. She could not sit by while Shine was attacked – but then, neither could she see any harm befall her father.

She heard the lock turned and the door creaking open.

“Why, Councillor, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

Was Shine trying to be provocative? Why would he do that? He must know it was not a good approach to take with her father.

“Where is she? Bring her here. I must see that she is safe.”

“If you refer to Grace, then, yes, she is quite safe.”

“How dare you call her…how dare you…what have you done to her, you unconscionable blackguard?”

“Put down your fists, Councillor, or haven’t you heard that I am not the man to square up to.”

Oh Lord, her father was trying to fight Inspector Shine! She couldn’t let the scene continue. She leapt from the bed and opened the door wide.

“Please, do not fight! There is nothing to worry about, Papa, all is well.”

Her father, far from sighing with relief, seemed to crumple, bending half over until his forehead almost met the floor.

“Oh, my Grace, my poor Grace,” he wailed. “Oh, you have ruined her! Ruined her! She is ruined!”

Grace was surprised to hear this at first, only slowly coming to realisation that she stood here, wearing a man’s shirt, having spent the night in his bed. The world would draw one conclusion and one conclusion only. How had she not seen this before?

“Bear up, old cock,” drawled Shine. “I mean to do the honourable thing, of course.”

“You do?” gasped the Councillor, his head rising slowly from its low-set resting place. “You have that much decency in you?”

“I trust I will have your consent?”

Grace’s father, ashen-faced, looked as if he might fall to the floor in a dead faint sooner than give it, but he managed to nod, his eyes bright with tears.

“What more can I do?” he said brokenly. “Every hope I had for her…oh, you will pay for this, sir. Believe me, you will pay for it.”

“I will pay for the special license, at any rate,” sneered Shine. “Three days ought to do it. It can’t be done quicker.”

“Three days.” The Councillor nodded.

Grace, a little lost, tried to go to her father, to console him in his dreadful state, but he held up his hands, preventing her.

“You are nothing to me now,” he said, the words striking like death knells in her ears. “I have no daughter.” The tears spilled on to his cheeks. “This will kill your mother.”

“Papa, how can you say so? Please do not cast me off! I do not deserve it.”

Shine, coming up behind her, took her hand and held it fast, keeping her out of her father’s reach.

“Don’t upset yourself, my dear,” he said. “Mrs Laverack will show you out, Councillor. I hope we may see you in three day’s time, on the church steps.”

“You will see me in hell first!”

“Papa!”

But the councillor was gone before she could make fresh entreaty, and she was left to make sense of what had just passed.

“What does it mean, Inspector Shine?” she pleaded, her hand still caught up in his. “What is to happen in three days? Why must we meet on the church steps? It sounds like Shakespeare, and just as difficult to decipher.”

“Why, my dear, you are an innocent one.” Shine shook his head, and his eyes held something like regret – tender regret, even. “It is not how you expected to be asked, I’m sure, but your father has just given his blessing – such as it is -  to our marriage.”

A peculiar sensation of having been painlessly clubbed over the head rendered Grace speechless. Her hand twisted and turned in Shine’s, but he held it firm.

“We are… in three days… oh, you cannot mean it…”

Shine, chuckling lightly, sat down in one of the armchairs, drawing her with him, on to his lap. Hooked securely in one of his arms, she had no means of escape, nor was it an unpleasant place to be, yet she felt no more than a sack of flour, hefted wherever it might be.

“There is no other course,” said Shine gently. “You are a young lady of good family, found in the bed of an unmarried man. Your reputation cannot recover from that. But all will be well, because I will make an honest woman of you. Do you see now?”

“I have heard of such goings-on,” she said, talking herself through it slowly. “But I never thought to apply them to myself…to real life… It all seemed like the kind of thing that happens to other people. Or people in books. Senseless, giddy girls who…oh. Am I a senseless, giddy girl? I had thought myself so much more than that.”

“You are a great deal more than that,” said Shine. “You are _my_ girl. My wife, that will be.”

“I cannot comprehend it.” She looked at him with quick concern. “Do you _want_ to marry me, Inspector?”

He kissed her forehead. “I think, under the circumstances, you may call me Jedediah.”

“Jedediah? What a mouthful.”

“It’s been said.” His lips curved into a wicked smile.

“Do you want to marry me, Jedediah, then?”

He held her beneath her chin and turned her face up for kissing, which was taken at a slow pace, the better to underline the seriousness of his intent.

“What do you think?” he whispered.

“I think…you do that very well…” she breathed. “But all the same, I am not sure I want to… It is not the life I thought I would have…”

“Oh, my dear, the lives we think we will have.” Shine shook his head at her, his nose rubbing against hers. “I do not believe there is one person in this great city who is living the life they imagined for themselves. At your age I saw myself as a great explorer and buccaneer, making bold new trade routes through countries yet to be known.”

“You wanted to be like Marco Polo?”

“Marco Polo…Columbus… And as rich as the East India to boot. But instead, you see me here, a Police Inspector in a wretched district of London, no longer even the divisional boxing champion I was for ten years, and still coming home to empty lodgings each night. No, it is not the life I dreamed of as a boy.”

“I thought I would go back to the West End somehow. Have a house on Berkeley Square. Go to all the balls and parties and theatrical first nights.”

“Well, my love,” he said, punctuating words with little kisses to her lips. “You may not have that life, but you might find that you prefer this one after all. I cannot promise balls and parties but I’ll take you to Wilton’s one of these nights. And we’ll have our own house, which will be your domain, and you will have the freedom of it. As many books as you want to read. A garden, if you wish it. I mean to take good care of you, Grace.”

She laid her swimming head on his shoulder.

“What if I say no?” she said, almost too quietly for him to hear. “What if I do not want to marry you?”

She felt his arm tighten around her, the twitch of his cheekbone against her face.

“Then you are alone in the world, my girl,” he said. “For your father will not have you back now.” He made her look at him, levering her chin with his fingers. “You cannot tell me you have no feeling for me,” he accused. “Your mind might not, but your body knows what it wants.”

“We should not be ruled by our bodies.”

He laughed again, and she felt infuriatingly patronised. If only she were not so much younger than him. If only her body would stop giving her away.

“I have never been of a mind to marry, but I find myself greatly looking forward to it,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll have your body ruling you before you know it.”

She was about to retort when a low knock announced the arrival of Mrs Laverack, with a tray of tea and kippers.

“Your breakfast, Inspector,” she said, with a glower at Grace, who was trying to arrange herself so that she didn’t look quite so much like a girl in only a shirt sitting on a man’s lap.

“Another cup and something for the young lady, if you don’t mind,” he said. “Perhaps an egg? Grace?”

“An egg, yes, fine,” muttered Grace, her words muffled by the fact that her face was buried deep in Shine’s lapel.

“Allow me to present to you, Mrs Laverack, my fiancée, Miss Grace Culford.”

There was a gaspy kind of silence.

“Fiancée?” said Mrs Laverack at length.

“Yes, we are to be married, on Friday if it can be managed. I will need witnesses; perhaps you could do us the honour?”

“On _Friday_? This week?”

“Indeed. Until that day, perhaps it would be best if Grace stays with you. More proper, so to speak.”

“Better late than never.” Mrs Laverack did not voice the sentiment, but Grace heard it in her silence and the way she snatched up the tray to take back downstairs.

“She can sleep on the cot in my room, I daresay,” snapped Mrs Laverack.

“Must I?” Grace pleaded once the door was banged shut behind the ungracious landlady.

“Mrs Laverack has a mouth like that tunnel they’re building in Blackwall. If you stay up here with me, all of Limehouse will know it. Is that what you want?”

“I suppose not. But…ugh…she hates me. I can tell.”

“She will not hurt you.” Shine poured his stewed-looking tea and shifted Grace so that he could eat and drink and hold on to her at the same time. “Her bark’s worse than her bite.”

“I don’t care to be barked at or bitten.”

“Then you’re probably marrying the wrong man.” He held a forkful of kipper up to her mouth. She grimaced and turned away. “But don’t fret, I shall leave that for work and bring my best self home to you. You should go and dress before Mrs Laverack comes back.”

He tipped her from his lap and sent her to the bedroom.

Once she was washed and dressed and back in the front parlour, he had finished his breakfast and was preparing to leave for the station. A second tray, with cup of milky tea and boiled egg in a chipped cup, stood in place of the first.

“Take it back down to Mrs Laverack when you have finished,” Shine instructed, pulling her into him and holding her close. “Stay with her for the day. I will come and call on you when I leave work.”

“I would rather stay here.”

“ _I_ would rather stay here, but there is much to be done. The obtaining of a marriage license, for one.”

“Jede..Jedediah,” she said, struggling to say the unnatural-sounding name.

“Sweetness?”

“Will my father leave off his pursuit of you now, do you think?”

He kissed her hard, pressing her tight against his pelvic bone.

“I have no doubt of it,” he said. “Now do as I have told you, and wait for me with Mrs Laverack. Limehouse will not police itself.”


	7. Chapter 7

Grace thought Mrs Laverack perhaps the most uncongenial companion to walk the Earth. She barely grunted at her all morning, leaving her to read the _Illustrated London News_ in the small back yard while she ironed and starched a tall pile of white shirts.

“Those are not all yours,” Grace said, wandering back into the scullery in the hope of initiating some kind of conversation. Her own thoughts were not proving very good company either.

“No, and perhaps it’ll be you ironing these soon enough,” she snapped. “Though the dear knows you’ll probably get some poor skivvy to do it for you.”

The thought of ironing shirts held no appeal for Grace. She was forced to admit that Mrs Laverack’s sour prediction was a good one.

“You have been married,” she said. “What is it like?”

Mrs Laverack looked up from her steaming iron at that.

“Lor’, what a question she asks! What is it like to be married? Well, in my case it was a lot of hard work. But my Laverack, he weren’t nothing like your Inspector. He was bone idle and he got so fat towards the end, I could hardly abear to look on him. But the Inspector’s a different kettle of fish. Keeps himself in good nick, he does, and barely sits down to rest from one day to the next. So my advice ain’t worth much to you.”

Grace sat herself on the draining board beside the large Belfast sink.

“I shan’t mind having my own house,” she said. “But the rest of it…I do not know if it will suit me. I never thought I would marry a man like him.”

“Ooh, listen to the airs and graces.” Mrs Laverack looked at her like something unpleasant from the coal hole. “Not good enough for you, is he? You don’t know you’re born, madam. He’s a very fine figure of a man and deserves better than to be trapped by some artful little hussy…”

“Oh, do you mean me? Are you calling me artful and a hussy?”

“Well, if the cap fits then you ought to wear it.”

“This is intolerable.” Grace shuffled herself down off the draining board. “I’m going home to plead with my father. He must change his mind if he sees how sorry I am, mustn’t he?”

Mrs Laverack looked for a moment as if she was going to send Grace off with a whole circus of fleas in her ear, but then she seemed to alter her intention, setting down her iron and putting her hands on her hips.

“Now, I’m afraid we can’t have that, missy,” she said. “I’ve had my orders from the Inspector to keep you close, and he says you’re not to go out alone, and certainly not anywhere near where your Pa might be.”

“What? He has told you to keep me prisoner here?”

“It’s for your own sake, now. He knows these streets better than most. You can come out with me, if you wish, but you must not go back to your father’s house.”

Grace felt a little flutter of fear at the base of her stomach. Inspector Shine seemed very unusually intent on this marriage. Had she really captured his heart so completely?

“Do you think my father will ever forgive me?”

“Oh, he’ll come round in his own sweet time,” said Mrs Laverack, the first words of reassurance she had had from the woman. “Don’t you fret. You’re his only child, aren’t you?”

Grace nodded.

“Well, then, if he don’t come round of his own accord, your Ma’ll make him. Count on it. It might take a little bit of time, that’s all.”

_But I don’t have time_ , thought Grace.

“I cannot conceive of the idea that I will be at my own wedding in three day’s time,” she said. “It has all happened like a whirlwind. I feel I have been flung up in the air and am yet to come down.”

“I must have words with the Inspector and get some money from him for your gown. We’ll go over to Spitalfields tomorrow – you can get some lovely stuff there for the price.”

And Spitalfields proved a great success, providing them with gown, accoutrements and trousseau for the cost of a pair of shoes in Chelsea. Made in local sweatshops, no doubt, but the quality was fine and the stitching neat.

Grace spent three days in the subterranean gloom of Mrs Laverack’s basement kitchen and bedroom, seeing the Inspector only when he called on them at supper time, straight from the station. His visits were unnervingly formal and the conversation stilted; indeed, Mrs Laverack took it upon herself to answer on Grace’s behalf most of the time.

“I suppose I must advertise for a new tenant,” she sighed on the eve of the wedding.

“Do not be too hasty,” said Shine. “I daresay we will stay here until a larger place becomes necessary.”

Grace found herself wondering what might necessitate such a move. The answer, when it came to her, flipped her stomach.

_We might have children._

“Perhaps it will not be necessary at all,” she ventured, trying to quell her rising horror at the prospect.

“I hope it will,” said Shine, raising his eyebrows at her in a manner she interpreted as disapproving. “I am not getting any younger.”

“ _You_ might be old, but I am not,” blurted Grace.

“How delicately put,” said Shine, but there was such an air of menace about his delivery that Grace found it wise to leave the matter there.

On her last night as a single woman, Grace lay on the cot by Mrs Laverack’s bed, quite unable to find any peace of mind. Something, she perceived, was quite wrong about all this, but she could not put her finger upon what it was.

Was it really such an unforgivable sin to sleep in a strange bed? Why, she had slept in her uncle’s bed before, while he was out at his club – nobody had suggested she should marry her uncle!

She tried and tried to pick apart exactly what it was she had done to make this hasty marriage necessary, but the nub of the matter evaded her entirely. She knew there was something, some mysterious thing, that passed between married men and women and gave them some ineffable level of experience that she lacked. Surely she would be in possession of this knowledge if she had indeed done what everyone accused her of.

She would know what it was, by this time tomorrow…

She sat up, feeling an urge to vomit. Tomorrow there would be somebody beside her in her bed. Tomorrow she would be Jedediah Shine’s wife.

These past three days, she had been torn between such warring impulses that she felt quite lightheaded with it all. When he had come to take tea with her and Mrs Laverack, she had longed for him to take her aside, somewhere quiet, and kiss her again. Yet at the same time, she hoped to find him repugnant, to gain the strength to walk out of his house and escape the prospect of spending her life with him.

Alas, although she tried her very best, she was never able to quite shake her inconvenient fascination with him. She feared that, even if she went home and found her father’s acceptance, Shine would draw her back as easily as a magnet draws a paperclip.

The next morning found her sitting bleary eyed in front of Mrs Laverack’s dresser while she tightened her stays and pulled curl papers from her hair.

“You’re a pretty girl but them circles under your eyes won’t do,” tutted Mrs Laverack. “I have a powder that might help.”

Upstairs, the door crashed shut.

“He is going to be very early,” exclaimed Grace.

“Not a bit of it; he’ll be for the barbers, then going to meet his pals at the pub, I should think.”

“Oh, will he be drunk at the altar?”

“I have never seen the Inspector drunk in these three years he has lodged with me. I doubt he’s about to start that habit now, on his wedding day.”

“Oh good. I am glad that I am not marrying a drunkard, at any rate. Their families suffer so fearfully.”

“That they do, and Laverack was fond of a drop, though he never cut up rough with it, God rest his soul. Now these curls are looking pretty as the day; shame they must be covered with a veil for most of the service.”

It was still well before noon when Grace and Mrs Laverack stepped out of their hansom at the gates of St Anne’s church. The day was warm but overcast, with a sultry breeze whipping litter down the familiar pavements of Three Colt Street.

Grace could not help but glance over at her home. Did anybody look for her, at the window? But she could see nobody and she was grateful for her veil as tears gathered in the corners of her eyes.

The dress held her tight and stiff and she could not help but move slowly and elegantly along the little path to the church. Mrs Laverack had just taken her arm, a few feet from the steps, when a black and white figure threw itself into her path and burst into impassioned speech.

“Oh, Miss, I couldn’t let your wedding day go by without coming to see you.”

“Lucy! Oh, Lucy! Oh!” She flung her arms around the parlourmaid, pressing her tight in a tearful embrace.

“I don’t know per-cisely what’s gone on, but I think your Pa’s been harsh and he should be here today. I’m so sorry he isn’t.”

“So am I. I wish everything might be different.”

“We shall be late,” humphed Mrs Laverack, trying to pull Grace up the steps.

“I must go back before I am missed, but will you let me come and visit you on my day off? Send me a message with the address – have them give it to Jim and it will find me.”

“I will. I would love that.”

She looked after Lucy as she bobbed away through the gravestones. She was still twisted that way when she walked through the church door.

There was no organ music to herald her arrival, and the congregation numbered less than half a dozen, none of whom were known to Grace.

As she approached the altar, Inspector Shine turned and smiled, and for a second she saw the smile as a diabolical thing, signifying dastardly triumph. But then the perception shifted and he looked merely pleased to see her, and full of admiration at her appearance.

She spoke the vows in a sing-song dream; they were like nursery rhymes, familiar words that could be chanted without stopping to consider their meaning. She had always thought her wedding would be such a grand affair, and her heart would be full, and she would speak her vows as gravely and clearly as the Queen at her coronation.

Why was nothing ever the way she imagined it would be?

Shine, for his part, took the vows in low and serious tones, making each pledge sound unbreakable. Why did they sound so similar to threats?

When he placed the ring upon her finger, she met his eyes for the first time. He held them until the vicar encouraged the kiss, into which she almost swooned with the careless gratitude of somebody needing something to lean upon before they fall.

“Well done, Mrs Shine,” he muttered, breaking it off.

_I am married. This is my life now. I am a married woman._

The wedding breakfast, such as it was, took place in the snug of The Grapes public house. Various characters, lawmen and lowlives alike, came to congratulate Inspector Shine and look her up and down with lecherous curiosity while they drank champagne and port wine and ate oysters.

Grace kept mostly quiet, her arm tucked into her new husband’s, while he held court and Mrs Laverack grew tipsy and sentimental, breaking into verses of old songs at the flimsiest provocation.

“Another bottle, Inspector?” cried a sergeant, pulling a banknote from his waistcoat pocket.

“No, I think I will make this our last,” he said. “For my wife and I have some business we must attend to.”

The raucous laughter this statement produced brought flaming colour to Grace’s cheeks. Her pulse quickened. Now, at last, the mystery would be solved and she would become the possessor of secret knowledge. If only everyone else didn’t know it too.

Shine helped her from her seat, all gallantry and flourish, before pulling her tight to his chest for a kiss whose ardour made the witnesses cheer and applaud, and then subside into mildly embarrassed silence, before escorting her outside to their waiting hansom cab.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it took me some time to get to the promised Victorian smut, but it's finally here - enjoy!

Grace was surprised, after being handed out of the cab, to find herself lifted into her new husband’s arms, with as little difficulty as if she had been a feather pillow, and carried up the steps to the front door.

Passers-by let out good-humoured cheers as she was borne aloft, although she herself managed only a brief startled squawk, followed by a giggle.

“Let’s have you over this threshold then,” he said, opening the door and proceeding up the stairs, again with no indication that he found her weight a burden.

She was in his rooms – their rooms, she supposed she should call them now – and plumped down in his lap on one of the armchairs before the noise from the crowd outside had subsided.

“Well, then, Mrs Shine,” he said, after the most extraordinary kiss. Really, was it usual to use one’s tongue in such a manner? Perhaps it was, and perhaps she did not much care anyway, since it had felt so gloriously, extravagantly voluptuous. “The marriage compact is not quite sealed yet.”

“Oh, is it not?” she fluttered, her limbs quite melted from what had gone before. “I thought we signed the register.”

“Signing the register was one part of it, getting the ring on your finger another. But until the consummation has taken place, it can all be rendered null and void.”

“Consummation?” she repeated faintly. “I thought that was something to do with royal weddings, when they needed an heir. Or something.”

“Oh, my dear,” he said, chuckling darkly. “Nobody has told you. Then I must show you. Up on your feet, girl.”

He put his hands about her waist and helped her to her feet, leading her into the bedroom.

She knew now that she stood on the threshold of the mysterious knowledge. She was both thrilled and terrified. Whatever it was couldn’t be too bad, surely, or no woman would ever want her daughters to marry.

She clutched at Shine’s riotous paisley waistcoat, her fist closing around the chain of his fine fob watch.

“You will be kind to me?” she asked, her breath catching. “I am a little afraid.”

“Oh Grace,” he whispered, stroking her face. “I will make it as pleasant for you as I can. Turn around now.”

She obeyed, and he proceeded to unpin her veil. She felt the curls tumble out of their restrictive clips, over her neck and shoulders. With each new release, Shine kissed the skin where they fell, his lips conferring the most delicious tingle. His hands held on to her, covering the tops of her arms.

When he moved them, to unclasp her necklace, she missed their solid warmth. He moved them down, below her chest, to clasp her around the waist, kissing her neck again with increasing fervour. Her eyes rolled back and she thought she might dissolve, the sensitivity of her skin sending eager messages to the centre of her body.

She offered herself up for more, inclining her head to one side and sighing deeply.

But he gave her only as much as she could take without crumpling to the floor, then he moved on to unlace her stays.

Grace’s breath shortened, the knowledge that soon he would be able to look upon things that no man had ever seen making her heart gallop. She felt the customary sweet relief of uncorseting, but it lasted only as long as it took him to slip her gown down, off her body, leaving her in only her petticoats and undergarments.

He growled with satisfaction, cupping her unfettered breasts in his big, rough hands and pressing his whiskery face to hers, nudging her lips to his for more kissing. His fingertips grazed her nipples through the linen of her chemise and she felt them swell and stiffen, as if reaching out and begging for more.

“Oh yes, these will do very nicely,” he muttered, pulling her around to face him. “Arms up.” She reached for the ceiling and he pulled the chemise all the way off, leaving her now in only her bloomers and stockings. She felt her face scald with mortification and she dropped her gaze to the floor, suppressing an urge to protest and cover herself up. She was fairly sure he would not allow it if she tried. His eyes on her, he weighed her naked breasts in his palms, then bent and sucked on each nipple in turn, flicking at them with his tongue until the ticklish intensity of it made her gasp.

“Get on the bed,” he ordered, his gruff tone dismaying her at first, until he noticed and left off unknotting his cravat to come and sit beside her.

“Have I done something to displease you?” she asked.

“If I seem hasty, it’s because I _am_ in haste,” he explained. “You are much too pretty a thing for a man to resist for long. My blood is up, sweet Grace, and will not be denied. It is a compliment to you.”

“Oh,” she said, mollified, although her tight smile still betrayed some anxiety. Was she driving him _wild_ with her body? It all sounded a little hazardous.

“So just you sit quietly there while I make myself ready.”

He flung off the cravat and went to work on his waistcoat.

Grace lay against the pillows, watching his back view as he went about divesting himself of his clothing.

After the waistcoat, he pulled off his shoes and socks, then his trousers disappeared. It was odd to see his bare legs, from mid-thigh where his shirt hem hung to his ankles. They were strong and well-muscled; he would have looked well in Regency silk stockings, she thought.

He folded the trousers and put them on a chair, then turned to her, now only in his long lawn-cotton shirt. He came and knelt before her on the bed, lifting her to him, winding her up in his arms and kissing her fulsomely.

This felt different now, with so few layers between them. Her bare breasts rubbed against the thin fabric of his shirt, and she could feel how firm he was inside it. Oh, this was so much better than any fully-clothed embrace. The heat and intimacy of it made her feel as if a fire burned in the pit of her belly. If this was the mystery of things, then it was a very welcome one. She could be held in his arms, lips to his lips, skin to his skin, for an eternity of time and it wouldn’t seem longer than a minute.

Still kissing, Shine pushed her gently down until she lay on her back. She clasped her hands around his neck, opening her mouth to give greater access to his probing tongue until he withdrew and sat back on his heels, panting for breath and wiping his mouth.

“You are no prim little Miss, are you, my girl?” he said, his eyes bright. “Not kissing like that. Anyone would think you’d done it before.”

“I never have,” she assured him and he laughed.

“I know, pet. I know. I have the luck of the devil.”

He stretched up to remove his shirt, and Grace feasted on the magnificent upper body thus revealed. Truly, he resembled one of the Greek statues she had seen in the British Museum, whose physiques had seemed as near fiction as the myths they represented. And yet he was real.

“You are not the only lucky one,” she said softly.

He kissed her once more, his hands at work on her breasts, then let his lips make a trail from her throat downwards, until he had kissed all the way to the waistband of her bloomers.

“I think _these_ can go now,” he said, yanking them down, her stockings caught up in the elastic and being dragged down in their turn.

Grace could not defy the imperative of her maiden modesty now, and she clamped her hands over that innermost triangle of secrets between her thighs, thinking that surely it was not the rule to be naked before one’s spouse, or why would a nightgown form part of the trousseau?

But her husband tutted, shaking his head, and pulled her hands gently aside. She turned her face to the pillow, her eyes tight shut, but again he would not have it, and he tapped her cheek until she looked up at him, tearful with mortification.

“All this is mine now,” he said, putting the palm of his hand flat against her nest of pubic curls. “I have the right to look upon it whenever I wish. And I think I will wish it often, so you may as well accustom yourself.”

“It feels wrong.”

“Wrong if you were not my wife, Grace, but you are, and therefore not wrong at all. Is that understood? Well?”

“Yes,” she muttered.

He took her by the hands and moved her arms above her head, crossing them at the wrists.

“Now, these are to stay where they’re put,” he told her. “You don’t move them until I give permission. Do not make me hold you down, because that is what will happen if you can’t behave yourself.”

He placed a hand beneath each of her thighs and pulled them apart.

Grace’s arms moved in reflexive reaction, on a mission to protect her private parts from this shockingly familiar usage, but Shine, quick as a whiplash, pressed them back in place, keeping one hand weighted on her wrists until she showed signs of compliance.

“I only want to please you,” he reproved. “To make this better for you. Now keep still.”

“I’m just…nervous,” she gasped. “Ah!”

For he had pressed the fingertips of one hand into that sacred place and cupped it as if in assertion of ownership.

“Have you never touched yourself here?” he asked.

She shook her head rapidly, barely able to comprehend the enormity of his violation.

“I was always told…it is not to be touched…”

“Then you were told wrong,” he said. “Let me show you. Be relaxed and I promise you will enjoy this.”

Slowly, very carefully, he began to stroke the hidden folds and crevices that lay in that neglected spot. Concentrating at first on keeping her hands in place, Grace soon found that her husband’s touch aroused a sensation, at first mild and pleasant, but growing quickly in intensity until she was twitching and panting. What was it that he did? She felt a kind of blossoming down there, something expanding and sending the sensation further and deeper with each revolution of Shine’s fingertips.

“Is it good, my love?” he asked, and his rakish smile showed that he was satisfied with her response.

“It is…ohhhh…what is it? Ohhh.”

The mystery! It was this! Was it? But how did it plant a child in one’s womb, if so? Was it this? Ohhh, who cared? It was so… What was happening to her?

The pleasure grew so overwhelming that she began to panic, her helpless hands making fists over her head while her hips writhed and twisted, conspiring with Shine’s fingers to make it bigger and brighter and better.

“That’s my girl,” crooned Shine. “Come for me now, pet…like that…yessss.”

All at once, she spilled over into a great cataract of bliss. It was as if everything in her lower body poured out through her legs and on to Shine’s fingers. Wave after wave, it went on and on, until it subsided into mere wavelets and she was able to stop making that alien wailing sound that had come out of her mouth.

“Well done, well done.” He kissed her, using his tongue again. She lay back, depleted, not one ounce of resistance left in her. “Now, was that not worth opening up to me for?”

“Was that the consummation?” she asked, kissing him back with grateful wonder.

He laughed and sat back up.

“Oh my dear. That was not the half of it.”


	9. Chapter 9

Inspector Shine reached down to the bedside drawer and took from it a square of folded linen, which he placed under Grace’s bottom.

Grace, still bleary from the strange and enervating feeling that had come over her, blinked slowly at her husband, who stretched out on his side, running his fingertips slowly over her body.

“You mean there is more to it? What more is there?”

He picked up her floppy hand and guided it to that part of him she had not dared look full at as yet. He wrapped her fingers around its thickness. She stared up at him, marvelling at how firm and yet fleshy it felt.

“This is…this is what makes you a man,” she said, squeezing it a little.

“Not too hard,” he cautioned. “It is not made of wood, you know.”

“What…must be done?” she asked fearfully.

He rose and knelt up between her thighs. The large stalk rubbed against them rudely. Grace felt like shutting her legs and pushing him away. This was all becoming a little alarming.

“I am past talk,” he said, lowering himself over her until he was braced upon his elbows, his face just an inch from hers. “I think it best if I show you.”

He took her hands and held them, clasped in his, on either side of her head, planting her inescapably on her back. She could not close her legs, because he lay between them, his lower half pressed against hers. He rocked, slowly and in small motions, back and forth so that his manhood breached her lower lips, rubbing gently against that part of her that had proved to possess such interesting secrets.

“You need to be wet,” he breathed, “and that was easily done, so…ahhh…”

“What are you going to...?”

He shifted slightly so that the tip of his erection abutted the small aperture between her lips and her rear cheeks.

“You can’t…I mean, that cannot be right, surely…” Her hands fluttered in panic, her wrists twisting helplessly in his firm grasp.

“Trust me, pet, it is right,” he growled. “And I must warn you that there will be some pain, the first time. Also some blood. But the pain will soon pass, and the blood will not be much.”

“Oh, I am sure this cannot be…”

“There is no other way. I will try not to hurt you too much…”

He pushed forwards and Grace, had she been able, would have risen up and fought him off, for it felt entirely unnatural, like the Biblical camel passing through the eye of a needle.

All the same, she realised that she was somehow stretching to accommodate him. Much as her mind insisted upon the impossibility of it, her body apparently knew better.

“Lord, but you are tight,” breathed Shine and, from his fervent manner, she judged that it was not a criticism.

Very slowly he edged further until he appeared to be obstructed from further progress.

She tensed all over, curling her toes and fingers tight.

“Hold on to me,” he said gruffly. “This may be…”

He surged forward, suddenly and violently. Grace cried out, feeling a sharp stab that receded into cramping spasms.

“All right, my beauty, that is the worst of it over now.” He bent and kissed her, reassuring her. “Just be still for me.”

She wanted to resist and push him back, but she knew she could not fight him – and besides, it would only have to be done again. Now it was begun, there was no more sensible course than to follow it to its conclusion.

She made a conscious effort to surrender herself to her husband’s will, telling herself that she must trust to his greater experience and his promise to care for her. All the same, as he moved backwards and forwards inside her, breathing hard and giving every impression of a man in an extremity of pleasure, she could not find this in any way comparable to the magic he had worked with his fingers before. It was like having a bruise persistently prodded.

“Ah, yes,” he panted, his movements gaining in rapidity and force. He lapsed into incoherence and Grace watched in fascination as his face, shiningly intense already, transfigured into some strange hybrid of agony and ecstasy.

For the first time, he looked fragile and she forgot her own discomfort, her heart warming to him.

He crumpled on to her breast, his cheek pressed against hers. She felt his chest rise and fall hectically against her skin, and could measure the rhythm of his heartbeat. He released her hands and she raked them through his hair and kissed all the parts of his face she could reach.

“Mmm,” he sighed contentedly, snaking his arms around her. “Well, you are deflowered, my love. I hope I did not hurt you too much?”

“It was a little painful,” she admitted. “Will it always be so?”

He kissed the tip of her nose. “No, pet. Just this first time. The next time will be better, I promise.”

Grace was not sure she was ready to contemplate a next time; all the same, there was something powerful about the experience that made her hope very much that he spoke the truth.

“It feels as if something is torn within me,” she said.

“It is,” he said. “But it will heal quickly enough. The quicker the better, for I am keen to have you again as soon as I may.”

He kissed her, and the kissing restored her in some measure, reawakening all the senses that had flourished beneath his earlier touch.

“I have made a very good choice,” he whispered. Five minutes later, he was sound asleep.

Grace, on the other hand, was unable to find equivalent peace. She lay awake, staring at the ceiling, feeling increasingly imprisoned by Shine’s enfolding limbs. Between her legs she became aware of a trickling sensation, and the tops of her thighs felt coated in something stiff, like glue.

She wondered if she could extricate herself from her husband and go to the washbasin, but she did not want to wake him.

Instead she let her thoughts revolve in a strange carousel, pieces coming together in her mind while others refused to make sense.

Now, at last, The Mystery was revealed. This was the experience that changed her from a girl to a woman. Did she feel more womanly? No, she did not think that she did. She felt rather fragile and as if the merest little thing might make her cry. At the same time, she was aware of a stronger bond with Inspector Shine – Jedediah, as she must learn to call him. This was the most intimate form of human intercourse, and they had shared it together. She felt much more solidly his, and more able to accept him as her husband. Consummation, after all, was a stronger seal than any amount of gold rings or signed papers.

And this, she realised with a jolt of distress, was what her father must have thought had already transpired, on the morning he came to find her.

Yet nothing of the kind had happened. Why, then, had Jedediah allowed him to believe it had? It was almost as if he had entrapped her. Why had he done it?

She wanted to shake him awake and ask him, but she sensed that this would not do her much good. So she lay there, weighed down by him in the humid late-August afternoon, sweating and aching down below and longing for sleep.

It must have come at last, because the next she knew it was growing dark and Jedediah was no longer beside her. There was the sound of water being poured into a bath in the room next door and the voice of Mrs Laverack, speaking low and indistinctly. Jedediah’s voice, louder but no less muffled, joined with it.

Grace sat up gingerly, wishing that Mrs Laverack might be consumed by some instant freak weather condition and taken from her life for good. Until the woman left, she could not rise and go to Jedediah. She felt her stomach rumble – those oysters were many hours ago now – and reached for the water jug to moisten her parched mouth.

At length she heard the shutting of the door and the clatter of boots on the stairs.

Grace pulled aside the covers and moved to get up, but the sight of the linen she had been lying upon gave her pause, transfixing her attention for a good half minute. It was stained with blood and some other diluting fluid, whilst her thighs were also caked in coppery flakes.

She threw the linen hastily into a lidded basket in the corner of the room, found a blanket in which to wrap herself and made her way to the front room. Every step was a reminder of the tenderness within. How long would she feel like this? Perhaps the bath would help.

She opened the door to find Jedediah, in a paisley silk dressing gown, pouring salt into the tub, which stood in front of the fireplace. It being the height of summer, only a sheaf of dried flowers stood in the grate, but the water steamed, adding to the heat in the room.

He looked up and smiled at her.

“I have drawn you a bath,” he said. “But it may need to cool awhile yet. Are you hungry? Mrs Laverack has brought up bread and cheese and pickles.”

“I am starving,” she announced, lowering herself carefully into one of the chairs that stood around the small dining table. She hissed slightly as a twinge of pain radiated out from inside her.

Jedediah came to sit opposite her, helping himself to the food and to a glass of apple cider from an earthenware jug.

“You still feel it?” he deduced.

She nodded, colouring brightly.

“The bath will be good for you. Warm water eases many kinds of pain. I took many a hot soak in my boxing days.”

“You do not box any more?”

He slathered pickle on his bread and cheese, failing to meet her eyes.

“Not any more, no.”

“Why not?”

“Too long in the tooth, girl,” he said briefly.

“You do not have the body of an old man.”

He met her eyes then, smiling.

“Kind of you to say so, sweetness. I keep my hand in at the boxing club, but I coach the younger fellows now. The practice bouts keep me in peak form, from which you may benefit.” He winked at her.

“Jedediah,” she said, shredding a crust into small pieces. “I want to ask you something.”

“Ask whatever you like. Whether I will answer is another matter. What is it?”

“When my father came here…”

Jedediah’s brow darkened, and she was almost afraid to continue, but she ploughed on regardless.

“…I think he must have gained an inaccurate idea of what had passed between us. I think he must have thought that…we had consummated a match without the wedding ceremony taking place.”

“I am not responsible for what he imagined.”

“But you did not disabuse him of the notion…I cannot but wonder why you did not…”

Jedediah replaced his tankard of cider on the table with a loud thud. He leant forward, his eyes dark, his expression forbidding.

“What is done is done, my dear,” he said. “And now neither you nor I can undo it. That is all you need to know. Now come, I think the bath is ready for us.”


	10. Chapter 10

If Grace had been asked, mere weeks ago, how she pictured married life to be, she would have spouted some romantic nonsense about two hearts that beat as one, and sharing all confidences and talking for hours about what inspires the soul. She would have painted a pretty picture of carriage rides, and new bonnets whenever she wanted them, and late nights staring into the fire and talking of dreams.

This, at least, was how she imagined the heroines of her favourite books lived their lives, once all obstacles had been lifted from course of the true love and they had entered the state of wedded bliss with their chosen ones.

Because that was what they called it, wasn’t it? ‘Wedded bliss’.

Yet only three weeks into her marriage, Grace wondered who had designed this concept, and whether they had intended to pull such wicked wool over the eyes of maidens everywhere.

It was not that she was unhappy. Not really.

Jedediah treated her well enough and she wanted for nothing. Indeed, his assurances that the marital act would improve with practice had proved to be accurate. Each night, they brought each other to higher and higher pitches of pleasure and passion, Grace blushing afterwards to recollect her sensual abandonment. She was not the coy creature she had thought herself, and Jedediah was clearly very satisfied indeed with the private side of their life together. He made her do things willingly that she would have screamed to even hear about, not so long ago. She tumbled into sleep each night, rosy-cheeked and exhausted, and remained in dreamland until he awoke her with more kisses, or a proprietorial hand on her bottom, hours later.

Outside the bedroom, though, there were aspects of her new life that were not quite so ecstatic.

He worked long hours and, while he was away, she was marooned in her dull rooming house on the Commercial Road with only Mrs Laverack for company. The prohibition on her leaving the house alone remained in force, so she was only able to visit the local shops and markets in that lady’s company. She tried many times to induce Mrs Laverack to travel further – to take a trip into the West End, or a stroll through a park – but Mrs Laverack hated what she saw as ‘gadding about’ and would not be tempted.

Instead, she was shut up with the tiresome woman in her kitchen, being taught how to perform various acts of domestic dreariness such as plucking a chicken or removing a stain from a shirt collar, despite the fact that Mrs Laverack’s job was to do all such things for them.

“You’ll be glad to know this one day,” was Mrs Laverack’s constant refrain, but frankly, Grace doubted it. “It’s dangerous work he does, and who’s to say he might not come home one night, and you left a young widow with nothing to keep the wolf from the door?”

“Oh, how can you say such things? Nobody will kill him. And besides, he has money saved. He would leave it to me.”

But an uneasiness rested deep in her heart. What if her father did find a way to have him hanged? What would become of her then?

She was always pleased to see him return from work, whatever time of day or night it was, for she found that Mrs Laverack’s gloomy warning had lodged itself in her consciousness and festered there, spoiling the hours she had to herself.

When he opened the door, she would rush to greet him, folding herself into his arms, putting up her face for relieved kisses. These were sweet moments, but they rarely lasted long.

She would try to make conversation over the evening meal, but he did not care to talk about work, and she had little enough to tell him of her day, except to complain about Mrs Laverack, which put him out of sorts. She tried to ask him about his years in Hong Kong but he dismissed it as ancient history. He could not be drawn on books, or music or any of the things she knew about, and her attempts to comment on the current affairs of the day usually ended in some lecture about how little she knew of the world.

The meal would end and he would silence her with kisses and carry her to bed, and there was another chance to know him wasted.

“It is as if he does not _want_ me to know him,” she complained, on the glorious day when Lucy finally paid the promised visit.

It was a mellow day in early September, and Lucy’s presence meant that – joy of joys – Grace could leave the house without Mrs Laverack. They made a slow arm-in-arm perambulation about Bow Common, the wide green space making Grace feel as if she were out of London entirely and in some kinder, lusher place.

“But he is good to you?” asked Lucy anxiously.

“He is good. At any rate, he is not cruel. I just wish he would tell me more of himself.”

“As long as he treats you well, I can rest easy,” said Lucy.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean – oh, Miss Grace – I mean, not Miss Grace anymore, Mrs Shine – but you know what I mean.”

“What do you wish to say to me?”

“Only that I am leaving your family’s service. I have found a place in a lovely house in Belgrave Square and I shall start there next week. I couldn’t leave without telling you. And I will be able to come and visit still…”

“Oh, Lucy! My mother will be lost without you.” Grace did not like to think of her mother any more. The guilt of the way she had left her weighed on her too much, and her eyes filled with tears.

“She will be all right, Miss…Ma’am…”

“Just call me Grace.”

“Really? Grace, then. Your mother is well, as I told you earlier. She has advertised for a new parlourmaid. There will be hundreds of girls who need the work.”

“But none like you.”

“You’re sentimental,” said Lucy, squeezing her arm. “Any girl can do as I do.”

“All the same, you must not stop visiting me. I will run mad with boredom.”

“You should get him to take you on a little holiday. A honeymoon, so to speak.”

“Perhaps that would be nice.”

But when Grace brought up the idea at dinner that night, Jedediah laughed sourly and said the criminals of Limehouse would love him to take a holiday, and that was why he could not.

“I do not believe that Limehouse would become overrun with crime and vice in the space of a few days,” said Grace mutinously, having entertained pleasant fantasies of bathing her toes on a sandy shore in the hours since Lucy’s departure. “Surely you are not the only policeman in the district.”

“When the cat’s away, the mice will play, my dear. And I am one very big and very nasty cat, as far as these dockside mice are concerned. Now, do not sulk, I will not have it. Besides, I am saving my cash for when we need to find ourselves a bigger house.”

“Oh, that may never happen,” she muttered, for this was another fly in her ointment.

Jedediah was eager for her to bear a child, and she dreaded the prospect, remembering her little stillborn brother and the slow decline of her mother that had begun at that point.

He frowned at her, holding out his hand imperiously for her to take.

“Let us give ourselves the best chance we can then,” he said. “Come on – to bed with you.”

Two weeks later, on the day of her birthday at Michaelmas, she woke to find him smiling down at her, leaning on one elbow at her side.

“Happy birthday, my love,” he said, kissing her into full consciousness.

She lay in his embrace, seeing how the early autumn sun speckled the bedspread, wondering what her eighteenth year might bring.

“You remembered,” she said, yawning. “I wondered if you would, since I did not remind you.”

“I could not forget, since I have given myself the day off work,” he said.

“Oh.” She sat up, delighted. “ _Have_ you? I thought you never took time off.”

“Perhaps I cannot run to a honeymoon, but a treat for your birthday is another matter. Now up and dressed with you, madam – we have a train to catch.”

Grace was washed, dressed, breakfasted and in a cab to Liverpool Street as quickly as she could be.

“Where are we going?” she asked, looking all around her at the crowded concourse and the great pall of steam that lay over everything.

“Somewhere with better air,” said Jedediah, leading her along a platform.

“The countryside? Or – oh! The coast! I do hope the coast. Papa used to take us to Brighton every summer. It has been a long time since I saw the sea.”

“Well, you shall see it today. We are going to Southend.”

He helped her up into a carriage, and shepherded her into an empty compartment. She sat down beside him, thrilled with proceedings, and watched enthralled as the train moved off and the dirt and grime of east London flew past the window and was left blessedly behind.

“Would you not prefer to live in the country?” she asked, watching sheep run as far away from the tracks as they could in panicking little packs.

“No, I would not,” said Jedediah, folding over his newspaper and putting it down in his lap. “What’s a man to do all day?”

“You could be a farmer. I might like to be a farmer’s wife. I could learn to churn butter and… I’m not sure what else farmer’s wives do.”

Jedediah sniffed. “Running sheep into a pen is altogether too close to what I already do for my living. I dare say it doesn’t pay as well. I think you better off as a policeman’s wife.”

“But a policeman’s wife is _nothing._ It isn’t a role. Farmer’s wives have their own work to do.”

“You want an occupation? Millions upon millions of women sweat their fingers to the bone for a crust, girl. I doubt you would freely exchange your life for theirs.”

She sighed. “I suppose not.”

She could tell that Jedediah disapproved of this line of conversation, so she fell silent, contenting herself instead with looking for her first glimpse of blue sea.

It came soon enough, followed by a cheery little town and fresh, salty air streaming through the window.

Grace insisted on going straight away to the sea front, where she pulled off her shoes and stockings and began to run to the shore, eager to leave the shingle behind and feel the sand underneath her feet and the foamy tips of the waves breaking over her toes.

She could hear Jedediah’s heavy tread on the pebbles behind her, and his voice calling to her, but she refused to hear it, refused to be told that she could not take this one great pleasure on her birthday.

He caught up with her before she reached the tide, seizing her arms and holding her back.

“You must not take cold,” he scolded. “You’ll catch a chill if you wet your feet.”

“Goodness, Jedediah, you sound like an old woman,” she complained, writhing and twisting in his pinion grip to no avail. “I only wish to paddle in the sea! People do it every day without any ill effect. Indeed, sea bathing is prescribed as a cure.”

“It will not cure you of anything,” he said grimly, marching her back up the beach. “And you have nothing to dry your feet with. Do not give me that face. Look, I will buy you an ice. Will that do?”

The ice cream went a little way to mollifying Grace, but still she found it difficult to understand why she should be forbidden to paddle in the sea, having been brought all the way here.

Sitting beside Jedediah on a bench on the promenade, she licked a curl of ice-cream on to her tongue and let it melt into blissful sweetness.

“I really do not think I would catch a chill from the sea,” she said plaintively. “I know it is not summer any more, but the weather is still warm for September. Why, it usually rains on my birthday.”

“If you will not take care of yourself, Grace, then I must see to it,” said Jedediah. “Now more than ever.”

She turned to him, frowning. “Why ‘now more than ever’?” she asked.

He placed a hand on her knee and looked at her very seriously, so seriously that she began to fear.

“Is something amiss?” she asked.

“How long have we been wed, Grace?” he asked, his eyebrows questioningly raised.

“About…six weeks, I think. Why?”

“Have you not noticed that in all that time you have not bled?”

She turned her face from him rapidly, pressing her lips together tight at the indelicacy of the subject matter, brought up here in full daylight in a public place! Only after the shock of this had worn off did she begin to consider the deeper implications of his words.

“I thought…the upheaval in my life of late…that is probably all there is to it.”

“There is something else, much more likely,” he said, and she couldn’t look at his smug, smiling face.

“No, no, it could not be that.”

He cupped her face in his hands then and kissed her with a passion much too unseemly for this sedate seaside promenade before lunchtime.

“Well done, my girl,” he whispered. “I am proud of you.”

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

Grace, a curious mixture of queasy and numb, sat in the palm court of Southend’s most gracious hotel, listening to a string quartet play favourite tunes from Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

“A policeman’s lot is not a happy one,” said Jedediah, quoting a lyric from one of the melodies. “A sentiment with which I can too often concur. Today, however, this policeman’s lot is happy indeed.”

He took a swig of his whisky and ginger, apparently relishing it as nectar of the gods.

Grace told herself again that he was mistaken and she couldn’t possibly be with child. Not so soon. Why, some people took years. And she had always thought somehow that it _couldn’t_ happen unless you wished it to.

“You haven’t touched your fruit cup, love,” he noted.

“I feel a little…”

“There, that is another sign,” he said triumphantly.

“No, not because of that…just…I have a headache. I think I would like to go home.”

“No need,” he said. “I have booked us a room here for the night. I thought if we caught the early train tomorrow morning, I could be back in time for work.”

“Oh. That is good of you. A real treat.” She thought she might burst into tears.

“Come on, let’s go up. They will have the room ready for us by now, I think.”

Once she was lying on the bed with her boots and stockings off, Jedediah took off his coat and came to sit beside her. He stroked her hair and her forehead, smiling beneficently down at her.

She shut her eyes.

“I will start to look for a house, when we get back,” he said. “A garden for the young one. Somewhere outside of Limehouse, a little greener, but close enough that I can walk to the station. Bow, perhaps.”

“Bow Common is pleasant,” she said tonelessly.

He moved his hand to her belly, laying his palm on its corseted-in flatness.

“Think of it,” he gloated. “A little Shine, growing in here.”

“I would prefer not to think of anything at all,” she said.

“I can see you are out of sorts,” he said, rising from the bed. “I will take a walk – leave you to rest awhile. I trust you will be feeling more amenable by the time I return.”

She turned on to her front, burying her face in the pillow. As soon as the door clicked shut behind him, she began to sob her heart out.

She was asleep when he returned, just before dusk. She was awoken by a creaking floorboard as he trod on it, and watched him hang up his coat and take off his shoes before joining her on the bed.

“Feeling better?” he said in a low voice, as if he had not noticed that she was awake.

“A little.”

He ran a finger underneath her eye sockets. “You’ve been crying, girl,” he said.

“I was tired.”

He snaked an arm around her, drawing her to rest in the crook of his shoulder.

“Are you afraid?” he said, “Is that what this is?”

She nodded. “I am afraid, yes. The last child to be born in my family was my brother, and he was dead.” She looked up at Jedediah. “He was dead, Jedediah. He had died in utero. My mother fought and struggled and almost bled to death in bringing him forth, and when she did…” Grace’s breath caught.

“Oh, now, hush.” He held her close, stroking her face, kissing her eyelids. “There is always danger, my love, in anything we do, but if the risk were not worth taking, the world would be empty of mankind. You are young and strong. I can engage the best doctor in East London to take care of you. If you fall prey to fear, you _will_ make yourself ill, and that I cannot allow.”

“But it changed my mother,” she said, tears falling on to her cheeks. “She was not the same afterwards. She took to drink and she is rarely sober these days. She said that what happened with my brother sapped all the strength she had and she would never get it back.”

“You are not your mother, Grace. There is no rule that says you must take after her.”

“But so often children take after their parents. This child…may be like you, or me. Or both of us.” She blinked at the strange thought, her curiosity to find out almost softening her dread.

“Your looks and my fists, if it’s lucky,” said Jedediah with a chuckle.

“Oh! I do not want him to box! If it’s a boy, that is.”

“Well, girls have a better left hook, they say.”

“What! Oh, you are joking! Do not tease me. I am not in the mood.”

He dabbed at her tears with a handkerchief, then laid her head on his shoulder.

“Whether the child is a boy or a girl, or a boxer or not, I will give it everything it needs to thrive.” He paused, and he felt a little strange against her, a little tremulous. His voice, when he spoke again, was queerly emotional. “This is a new start for me,” he said. “A new kind of life. At my age, I am lucky to be granted it. Lucky to still be alive, even.”

Grace twisted to look at him. His manner was giving her some concern. She had never seen him thus, apparently in a state of some vulnerability. Had he been drinking?

He saw her anxiety and cupped her face in his hands, which still shook a little.

“You are saving me, girl,” he said hoarsely. “From what I was before. I can be someone else now. Your husband. That nipper’s father. Our names will all be together in the churchyard one day, and youngsters yet unborn will come and lay flowers on our graves.”

To her alarm, Grace saw that his eyes shone with tears.

“I never thought…” He had to cease talking. He pulled her fiercely to his shoulder and held her there, rocking her gently until his trembling ceased.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “This news has affected me powerfully. I suppose you will not want to dress and come down to supper?”

“Oh, shall we have something sent up?” she suggested, too tired and overwrought to even consider making a public appearance. “But not yet. I am not hungry.”

She put a tentative hand on his cheek and stroked along the cheekbone with her thumb, holding his gaze as she did so. She felt something for him tonight that she had not felt before. It made her want to comfort and care for him. Was this love? Or something close to it?

“Will you come to bed with me?” she whispered.

He bent and kissed her, tenderly, lingeringly.

“I wish I could, love,” he said. “But I have to meet a fellow in the bar. Not for long. Just a little bit of business to discuss. Then I will come back and you may ask anything at all of me.”

“Oh!” She drew away, taken aback. “Whom might you be meeting, in a place like this?”

“A business associate, as I’ve said.” He got up from the bed and busied himself with his boots and coat. “I promise, I will have one drink with him and come back up. I could not avoid him – bumped into him while I was taking my walk earlier. It’s just a courtesy.” He blew her a snatched kiss and banged out of the room.

Grace sat up straight, thrown into confusion by this abrupt change of tone. There she had been, about to offer him her heart and soul, and he had rushed off to meet some Limehouse…what? What sort of _business associates_ did policemen have, apart from criminals and other policemen?

She went straight to the washbasin and gave her tear-blotched face a rinse and pat dry, then rubbed in some cold cream. Boots and stockings donned, she took the room key and slipped out on to the landing. Jedediah was not going to spend her birthday convening with East End lowlives in the bar. She would shame him into coming back upstairs with her.

She was almost at the bottom of the stairs when a large, florid man in late middle age crossed the lobby and enquired in a loud voice of the receptionist where he might find the bar.

“I’m meeting a fellow there, you see, guest of yours. A Mr Shine.”

Grace stopped in her tracks, then went to stand behind a large potted palm at the side of the lobby.

“Go straight through the arched door, sir, and you’ll find…”

But the receptionist’s advice was unnecessary, as it turned out, for Jedediah strode towards the desk, all bonhomie and good cheer.

“Ah, Galbraith,” he said, reaching out to shake the man vigorously by the hand. “You found me.”

“Well, Southend is rather out of my way, you know, but I suppose it’s safer than Limehouse.”

“Limehouse is like living inside a giant laundry – everyone has their hands on everyone else’s dirty linen,” said Jedediah. “Come, let me get you a drink.”

They passed very close to Grace’s potted palm and she shrank back, suddenly fearful of discovery. _Galbraith?_ That was the man she had been protesting against on the day she and Jedediah met – the slum landlord desperate to sell off his land to a developer.

Why would he be meeting Jedediah? And in secret?

Her stomach churned with unease, unless it could be blamed on the baby.

Oh _God,_ the baby. What if there really was one?

Her head spinning with mystery and dilemma, she ran back upstairs to her room and buried her face in the pillow once more.

 


	12. Chapter 12

Lifting her face from the pillow, Grace decided that she would not be left alone up here to stew while her husband connived with Limehouse’s worst slum landlord.

She got up off the bed and, with determination this time instead of stealth, made her way back down to the hotel lobby. She marched into the bar with her shoulders back and her chin high, found the table at which Jedediah and Galbraith sat, and took a chair between them.

“Grace!” Jedediah did not look delighted to see her.

“I find I am feeling much better,” she said. “Jedediah, are you going to introduce me to your companion?”

“This is not ladies’ talk, my love,” said Jedediah uncomfortably. “You will be better in our room. I will come and take you to supper when we are done.”

“I do not care to spend any more time in our room,” said Grace. “It is my birthday, and I think a lady can do as she pleases on her birthday, don’t you, Mr Galbraith?”

The look on the face Jedediah turned to her was enough to make the stoutest of hearts quail, but Grace maintained her brittle smile, waiting for Galbraith’s reply.

“Why, er, yes, of course,” said Galbraith. “A lady’s wishes should always be paramount. But, tell me, how do you come to know me? I am sure we have not met before.”

“You do not know me, but you have encountered my handiwork,” said Grace. “For it was I who threw the rock that shattered your office window some two months ago.”

“It was…” Galbraith was speechless.

“My dear, I think you are a little unwell,” said Jedediah, wrapping his fingers around her upper arm. “Perhaps too much sun… I will take you upstairs.”

“You will _not_ ,” she cried, at such a volume that all the heads in the bar turned to their table. She tried to wrench her arm from his grip, but he held fast, rising from his seat so that she had no choice but to stand with him.

“The lady is overwrought,” said Jedediah loudly, for the benefit of the room, “and needs to rest. Here we go now.”

He had an arm close around her shoulder now and was steering her rapidly out of the bar.

She looked back at Galbraith, determined to fight, despite the clear fact that a physical struggle was futile.

“My father is Councillor Henry Culford,” she called. “And he knows what you are, and he will finish you. I promise, HE WILL FINISH YOU.”

These last words were delivered in such ringing tones that nobody in the bar or lobby could have failed to hear them.

Jedediah’s grip tightened painfully, his fingers bruising the soft flesh of her upper arms.

“Get off me,” she gasped, twisting and stalling all the way to the staircase until, at its foot, he decided to make life easier for himself and hauled her unceremoniously over his shoulder.

He carried her up the stairs like a rag doll, while she wept and raged at the humiliation of it. On entering their room, he deposited her on the bed, threw off his coat and came to kneel in front of her, holding her legs between his restricting knees.

Now, with him looming over her like this, her fury chilled into fear. She tried to push him away, but he held her wrists so that she was immobile.

“Please do not hurt me,” she blurted. “There is the child…”

“Lucky for you,” he growled. “Or I would take my belt to you, girl, and you would not be sitting comfortably for a week to come.”

“You think it acceptable to strike a woman? Well, have I not picked a prince among men! My father was right about you.” She sucked in a breath and flinched as it seemed he would raise his hand, but in the event, her fear was unfounded.

Instead, he drew a long breath and loosened his grip on her, although it was still tight enough.

“And I was right about you,” he said in a low voice. “That you are a spoilt, reckless little madam that needs keeping in check. But you will learn to control yourself. I will not be shown up by you again, mark my words.”

“You consort openly with the worst of men. Do you expect me to applaud you?”

“I expect you to keep your mouth shut and trust me to do my work, Grace. What you call ‘consorting’ might be to me ‘evidence gathering’. And now all my good work might be undone by your bout of hysteria.”

“What do you mean? What good work?”

“Haven’t you ever heard that more flies are caught with sugar than vinegar, Grace? I am bringing Galbraith into my sugar bowl, steadily but surely, and now your vinegar threatens to spoil all.”

“You are…not his friend?”

“Things are seldom what they seem.” He leant closer to Grace, his eyes boring into her. “You know what happens to hysterical women, don’t you, my dear? You know where they go?”

“Oh, do not…I am not hysterical. Do not say it of me.” Her breathing was ragged now, her heart high in her chest, beating hard.

“I will not say it of you when it is not true,” he said. “Show me you can be calm and I will have no need to make such threats.”

The fight left her, vanquished by the ghostly image of the insane asylum.

“I am calm,” she whispered. “See. I am calm.”

“Good.” He released her wrists and stroked her face, clammy now with fear. “There now. That’s my girl.”

He rose from the bed, to which she felt pinned, and put his coat back on.

“Do not move from that spot,” he said. “I will be back soon, with your supper.”

For a long time, perhaps twenty minutes, Grace remained immobile, as if to move would be to bring

back the terrifying wrath of her husband, whether or not he was present.

The six weeks of their marriage, during which he had shown her only affection and care, had caused her to forget how deeply disquieted she had been by their first encounters. Her initial instinct had been to keep clear of him, and she remembered now how her flesh had crawled at the thought of him, prior to that furtive assignation in the hansom cab.

Somehow, he had used circumstances to insinuate his way into her good graces. He had seen at a glance that she was restless, lonely, lacking a direction in life, and he had used this to manipulate her emotions and present himself as an agent of positive change.

“He does not love me,” she whispered to herself. “What am I to do?”

She had been so ready to give herself wholeheartedly to him, just an hour before. And now everything was rotten and her life was in ruins.

She was still sitting on the bed, with her head in her hands, when he came back from the bar.

“Soup,” he said, setting a bowl on to the nightstand beside her. “Mock turtle.”

“I cannot…”

“No, you must eat,” he said. His tone was firm but conciliatory, perhaps a little apologetic. He slid his fingers beneath hers, removing her hands from her face. She could not meet his eye.

“Grace,” he said. “Grace.” She felt compelled to look at him, despite herself. “If I was harsh with you before, I’m sorry. But I have worked long and hard to build up my case against this man, and to have it knocked down in a moment…”

“You said you would have me put away,” she said. “In an asylum.”

“I said nothing of the sort,” he countered. “Do you really think I would deprive my child of its mother? I am not a monster, Grace.”

“But you did say…”

“What did I say?”

Now she came to think of it, she could not quite remember. Perhaps he had not mentioned the asylum explicitly. He had merely hinted at it. He had not said the words, but he had _meant_ them. She had been sure of it.

“You were cruel,” she whispered.

“I spoke in anger,” he said. “You cannot provoke a man and expect no reaction. I am not impervious to human feeling.”

“I thought you loved me.”

“Oh, you… Look.” He held her face, his fingertips at her temples. “I have vowed to love you, have I not? And I am a man of my word. I will keep that vow, and all the others, until death. You need have no fear of that.”

“Truly?”

“Truly. And I ask the same of you. I have the right to expect your love, your honour and your obedience, my dear. If you cannot keep those promises, you may as well tell me now.”

“You speak as if you doubt me.”

“I speak only as I find. Well?”

His hands imprisoned her head so that she could not tilt it to one side or the other, or retract her neck away from him. She was held in the beam of his fierce green glare, a glare that was able to erode any resistant impulse until she embraced submission to his much stronger will.

“I want nothing more than to love and be loved in return,” she said.

His lips met hers in a tender embrace.

“Then all is well,” he murmured, his words warming her lips. He let go of her and picked up the dish of soup, removing the spoon and placing at at her mouth. “And you must eat.”

After she had taken enough unwilling spoonfuls of the stuff to satisfy Jedediah, the bowl was placed aside and he put her feet in his lap, unlacing her boots and removing them.

“Jedediah,” she said, her mind still numbed and reeling from the shocks of the day.

“Mm hmm?” He pulled off her stockings, one by one, then turned her away from him to unbutton her dress.

“You said I was saving you. Giving you a new start…a new life.”

“Did I?” He undid the last button and slid her sleeves down her arms, baring them.

“You did. And I wondered…”

“Up now.” He made her lift her legs to remove the dress, leaving her in her undergarments.

“What I was saving you from.”

He folded the dress roughly and threw it on to a chair in the corner of the room.

“What,” she continued gamely, “was so bad about your old life.”

He reached around her from behind, tugging at the laces of her corset. She wished she could see his face.

“I was alone,” he said, pulling the stays apart, slipping his hands beneath her freed breasts. “I had nobody. That’s what I meant. But now I have you…”

He fixed his lips to her shoulder, just above the gathered neckline of her chemise and kissed a determined trail up to her neck. He tore off the corset, threw it down, took two generous handfuls of her breasts.

“But you had someone once,” she said, trying to fight her body, which wanted to swoon stupidly into his touch. She would not be so easily diverted, she would not!

He grunted, still kissing hard, plying at her nipples. His moustache and whiskers dragged a prickly trail over the sensitive skin of her neck.

“A Chinese lady,” she said. “A very beautiful Chinese lady.”

He stopped kissing, his hands falling still over her mounds. He knelt back and pulled her around to face him, his eyes blazing.

“Who on earth have you been talking to?” he growled, enunciating the words with bloodfreezing precision.

Petrified once more, she tried to speak, but her tongue felt huge and stupid in her mouth and the words would scarcely come out.

“Nobody,” she gasped. “Nobody. I saw…a photograph…”

With one hand on her shoulder, he pushed her flat on her back, took off his coat and waistcoat, keeping his eyes on her all the time.

“And why,” he asked, “would you be looking through my belongings?”

“I was just curious,” she babbled. “It was the night I came to you…that first night…and I was just curious, that’s all…being in the bedroom of a man I barely knew…”

He shrugged his braces over his shoulders, lifted off his shirt, eased down his lower garments.

“A souvenir,” he said, rolling her petticoats up her legs. “From my time in Hong Kong. That’s all.”

He lowered himself over her until he shadowed her, his face above hers.

“The past does not concern us now, my love,” he said. “It is best forgotten. We will not speak of it again. Shall we?”

He nudged her thighs apart with one knee, lined his pelvis up with hers, rubbed his manhood in her channel, preparing her for what was to come.

“No,” she breathed, shutting her eyes, trying to master the tremors that threatened to overwhelm her.

He was inside her in an instant. She threw back her head, spread out her arms, showed him her throat.

He sighed with satisfaction at the sight, and kissed her with killing sweetness.

“There’s my good girl.”


	13. Chapter 13

Autumn crept into Limehouse, less visibly than in the leafier parts of London, but still the brown fogs increased and the women drew their shawls tighter and the litter blew with added determination into every corner and crack of the street.

As the days shortened, so Grace’s condition became more obvious and less capable of denial. She began to fall prey to nausea at odd times of the day, keeping always a dry ginger biscuit about her person. While there was no outward show, she felt inexpressibly tired and was often asleep before Jedediah returned home. Most distressingly, her breasts were so sensitive that she tried everything she could to keep his hands off them – but as their increase in amplitude proved most attractive to him, this was difficult.

The storm in Southend seemed a distant thing now, and it was unspoken of between them. Jedediah reassumed the veneer of attentive and affectionate husband in double measure, bringing her often little gifts and trinkets home with him: flowers from the market or ginger cordial to ease her biliousness.

Yet Grace could not quite bring herself to forget what she had seen. Even in his most tender and considerate behaviour, she detected deceit, a conscious effort to blind her to the brutal truth of his nature. The sweet words could twist into ugly threats, the hands that caressed might one day strike or strangle, the body that gave such pleasure could also torment and destroy her.

Forbidden to delve into his past, she was nonetheless intensely preoccupied with it, to the point of asking Mrs Laverack odd questions until she complained to Jedediah and the questions had to end.

On that gusty evening in mid-October, Jedediah raised the subject after they had eaten. Arranging himself in his armchair, he beckoned Grace to him with a meaningful pat of his thigh. She took her place upon his lap, expecting no more than the standard post-prandial canoodle. But this time, her husband’s face was serious as he slid his arm around her waist and laid his forehead to hers.

“A little bird tells me that you have been prying into ancient history,” he murmured.

There was nothing of overt menace in his softly-spoken words, yet she felt herself immediately vulnerable, her pulse quickening accordingly.

“Mrs Laverack is nobody’s idea of a little bird, surely,” she said with a brittle laugh. “A great black cormorant, perhaps.”

“Mrs Laverack does very well for us, my love. I do not care to hear her spoken of so.”

Grace swallowed.

“All the same, I shall be glad when we can move to our own house.”

“I have asked her to consider taking up post as our housekeeper, when that time comes.”

“Oh, you have _not_!” cried an aghast Grace, who had been contemplating asking her old maid, Lucy, to apply for the position.

“She has accepted my offer and intends to sell this place when the time comes. And besides, you are diverting me from the subject at issue, which is your refusal to allow bygones to be bygones.”

“I merely…I meant no harm…”

“I am sure you did not. All the same, you should not allow your nerves to get the better of you.”

“My nerves?”

“We have talked before, have we not, about this nervous hysteria.”

“Jedediah, no, it is not…”

“Do not agitate yourself, my dear. I have been reading up on the subject, and it seems there is a most interesting treatment for it.”

“Please! You would not send me away…”

“Hush, hush, of course I would not, of course not.” He kissed her in between each pledge, holding her close, in such a facsimile of reassurance that her body could not help but relax a little.

“I am quite well, I swear. There is no need for treatment.”

“Ah, but this is a medicine you may well come to beg me for,” he said, chuckling. “And I am happy to provide it at any time.”

“What is it?” she asked, curious despite her sense that Jedediah was only saying all this to frighten her.

In reply, he reached down to draw up her skirts. She stared up at him, open-mouthed with shock. What manner of medicine could this possibly be?

“These doctors find that female hysteria can be eased by bringing the patient to frequent paroxysms of pleasure,” said Jedediah, his fingers tiptoeing inexorably up the legs of Grace’s drawers. “Not that you are badly off for such already,” he said. “Indeed, I think you do somewhat better than most women on that score… all the same, there can be no harm in…” His fingers reached the apex of her thighs. “…Increasing the dose.”

Grace clung on to his waistcoat lapel, hiding her face in his shoulder as he found the slit in her drawers and eased his hand inside. His fingertips sought the mound of her clitoris, which he commenced to work upon, stroking through any show of resistant tension on her part with his customary determination. Her fearful stiffness soon lapsed into limp compliance as she perceived that this ‘treatment’ was nothing to dread.

But although there was no pain in it, there was a sense of abasement that lay heavily on her, and Jedediah made sure she experienced the full shame of her position, explaining it to her as he administered the remedy.

“You are simply one of those girls that needs plenty of it, aren’t you?” he crooned, as she twitched and gasped along to his ministrations. “Starving for it…well, I can feed you all right…I can give you as much of this as you can take…as many times a day as you need… there, now…that’s it…”

Grace was thrown into conflict, her body unable to fight the pleasure with which her husband punished her. Her eyes sprung with tears as she let out a muffled sob into his shoulder, falling down deep into the animal part of herself over which he had such strong dominion.

“Doesn’t that feel better?” he whispered, kissing her ear.

She clutched at his waistcoat, wanting to tear it apart, but so enervated by her release that she could barely hang on.

“I think you are ready for bed,” he said, moving to stand and tip her on to her feet. “Go and lie down. I will join you when I have smoked my cigar. And Grace.”

She turned her flushed face to him.

“There is only the present and the future for us to think of now, my love. We can make whatever we want of it, so long as we do not let the past interfere.”

*

Defeated, Grace made no more attempt to look into Jedediah’s past. She slept most of the day, Mrs Laverack sweeping and banging around her, and spent much of the night entwined with Jedediah, who had taken to his medicinal duties with alacrity. Eating, washing, vomiting and occasional reading or sewing took up the remainder of her time.

She wrote several times to her father and mother, begging their forgiveness, but no reply came – indeed, she wondered if Mrs Laverack even put the messages into the post. Lucy visited once, full of tales of her grand new family. Grace did not have the heart to tell her that she expected a baby, nor did she dwell upon her married life. She walked across the windy Common and back, barely contributing a word, letting Lucy twitter into one ear and out of the other.

“Are you sure you’re well?” said Lucy, bidding her goodbye at Grace’s front steps. “You look awful pale.”

Grace was seized by an impulse to tell Lucy that she was a prisoner, her husband her gaoler, and the child inside her the key to her prison cell.

But she said nothing of the kind, simply shook her head and said she was a little tired, that was all.

*

The next day, there was a front page on the _Illustrated London News_ that made her run to her basin and kneel in front of it, dry heaving until the image blurred in her mind.

The body of a Chinese man had been washed up along the river by the Royal Albert Dock. He had a deep wound to the throat, suggestive of murder by garrotting, and he had been dead perhaps a little over two months. He was known to be involved with the opium trade in Limehouse, and had been sought by the police at H-Division in connection with an investigation.

Her stomach a little calmer, she took the paper and slipped out of the house with it – it was a little after midday on a Monday, and Mrs Laverack was busy with her great steaming washing copper in the back yard, whilst Jedediah would remain at work for some time to come. Grace would not be missed until Mrs Laverack came up with her luncheon at half past one.

Ten minutes later she found herself in the lobby of Limehouse Town Hall, awaiting her father. He arrived, in the company of the clerk she had sent off to find him, giving her identity only as that of an interested member of the public.

“Grace!” said Councillor Culford, stopping dead in his tracks as his eyes alighted on his errant daughter. “I hardly expected…what brings you here? Did you receive my letters?”

She shook her head. “Nobody has given me any letters.”

“That scoundrel! I have sent…”

“Let us talk of this later,” she said, unfurling the newspaper. “For now, I only want your confirmation of something.”

“Oh?” He frowned as she showed him the illustration of the murdered man.

“Is this the man you sought in connection with your case against Jedediah?”

Her father seized the paper and stared. “Zhang Wei,” he breathed. “Yes. That’s the man. He went missing…”

“The day you found me in Jedediah’s house?” completed Grace.

He nodded. “He was seen in a gaming house that night, and never again since.”

“I signed his death warrant,” murmured Grace, blank with despair at the realisation.

“What?  How can that be so? Grace, come back home and visit your mother. She is pining away. Come and stay with us.”

“He will come for me,” she said. “It is no use.”

“Grace! I will not let him take you from me…”

But already she had left the Town Hall, the paper rolled up in her hand. She took to her heels and ran along Commercial Street, past Mrs Laverack’s house, westwards into the City.

She would go to Belgravia, find Lucy, hide out a while in her basement kitchen until she could decide what must be done. Through Shadwell, into Whitechapel she ran, becoming lost in a maze of alleys and courts as she took random turns to avoid risky looking people and situations.

Here it was dark, the reeking brick tunnels oozing, rats squeaking away from her footfall. As she splashed through puddles and mud, every wall advertised a music hall turn or a ghastly murder.

“Oh, what is the way out of here?” she moaned, turning a hopeful-looking corner only to find yet more mazes of festering alleyways.

There was the sound of scuffling feet behind her, then a searing pain on the crown of her head. She managed to cry out, “My baby!” before collapsing into blackness on the slimy cobbles.

 


	14. Chapter 14

Grace awoke in a soft feather bed. When her eyes became accustomed to the light, she found that she was in a room that was luxuriously, if rather flamboyantly, decorated, furnished with silk wall hangings and all manner of ornaments. There was a curious smell, though, rather heavy and oversweet, as if to mask some less pleasant bodily odour. Was it her own?

She lifted her head from the pillow, making a feeble sound that brought a young lady in thick face paint to her bedside.

“Oh, you’re awake, miss,” she said. “How’s your head? The doctor’s been and gone, he said you weren’t in no danger but you might feel a little bit confused for a spell.”

The lady was wearing a satin wrap over bare shoulders and a low-cut burgundy velvet corset. Her clothes were pretty but not exactly respectable.

“My baby,” she whispered. “Is my baby safe?”

“That’s why they brought you here,” confided the lady, whom Grace now saw could not be much older than herself. “Cos you said that about a baby, before you hit the ground. But the doctor says it all seems well, just to call for a midwife if you start to bleed, you know…” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Below.”

“I did not lose the child.” Grace propped herself painfully up on to her elbows. Her head ached most horribly, but she was at least alive and in a safe place. “What is this place?”

“Just a house where ladies live,” said the girl evasively. “In Chicksand Street. Them little bastards what copped you over the head got away with your purse and your jewellery. No more’n eight years old, he reckons, the man that brought you here.”

“I was robbed.” Grace tried hard to make sense of her last remembered moments. “I see.”

“They might send a copper round to take your statement,” said the girl importantly.

“Oh.” Grace’s head throbbed. “I would rather not. Please, I do not wish to see any policeman.”

The girl’s eyes widened.

“I understand,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper. “I’ll go and tell Miss Susan you’re awake. She might be able to help you. You’re pretty enough, anyway.”

Grace lay back on her pillows, wondering what it was the girl understood. Surely she could not know that Grace was the wife of the principal officer of K-Division? What if she did? What if they had informed Jedediah and he was even now on his way to collect her?

She struggled back up, looking wildly around for her clothes and shoes, for she lay here barefoot and in only her chemise and a knitted wrap. She could not set foot out of the bed, however, without falling prey to dizziness and she lay back again, defeated.

The door opened and a small, tidy, fair-haired woman came to sit at her bedside.

“Julia, some water for our patient,” she called to the girl who had brought her. “Are you hungry, dear?”

Grace shook her head. “I do not think so.”

“All the same, I will have some chicken broth brought up for you. You are very pale. I’m Miss Susan, the proprietor of the house. What is your name?”

“Grace,” said Grace without thinking, then, in a panic lest Jedediah should be called, she tried to think of a false surname. The last book she had read sprang into her mind. “Audley. Grace Audley.”

“That was a very nasty blow to the head you took, Mrs Audley,” said Susan. “But we have had you examined by a doctor and he says that you have not lost your baby, and you will recover soon enough from your concussion. So now all that remains is for us to send word to your husband, so he can come and take you home.”

“Oh, no, no,” said Grace, clutching at the bedclothes. “You cannot send for him. He is…he is dead, you see. He died.”

“Oh, my dear,” said Susan, frowning a little. “I grieve to hear it. This must have been a recent loss?”

“It was, yes, it was last Thursday,” Grace improvised feverishly.

“Had he been ill for long?”

“No, it was very sudden. Very sudden. Just dropped down dead in the street. I think…a heart complaint.”

“It is too cruel. You, so young and left a widow with a baby on the way. But the child will console you, I hope.”

“I hope,” said Grace. “Yes, I hope so. I have a friend who can help me. I will go to her. Unless you will let me stay here? I can earn my keep. I am not much of a cook but perhaps I could clean for you…”

Susan let out a brittle laugh. “Mrs Audley, I am not sure you know what manner of house this is. I do not think your poor late husband would care to find his wife working here.”

Grace blinked, uncomprehending.

“But do not worry about that for now,” she said. “You must rest until your concussion is better. Let me see about that chicken broth.”

Grace managed a few spoonfuls of broth, then settled back into an uneasy sleep full of florid, frightening dreams in which the face of her husband featured large.

In the middle of the night, she awoke, and the sound of male voices in the rooms below made her take fright and fear that Jedediah was in the house. She crept to the door, steadier on her feet now, and put her ear to the keyhole. All manner of sounds could be discerned – female laughter, the thud of footsteps on the stair, then the persistent, urgent creaking of bedsprings, reminding her of the nights she spent with her husband… Oh, a married couple must share the room below.

Reassured, she returned to her bed and her sleep, where she remained for another two days, swimming in and out of consciousness.

When she awoke on the third morning, the girl Julia brought her breakfast. She felt well enough to leave her bed and take a bath. Refreshed and dressed in some clean clothes Julia brought her, she came down to take tea in the parlour with Miss Susan.

“I thank you so much for your kindness,” said Grace. “I hope I will be able to repay you soon – for these lovely clothes as well.”

“I do not require payment,” said Miss Susan, shaking her head. “But before you go, I have a gentleman who wishes to speak with you.”

Grace clutched the arm of her chair, perspiration prickling along her hairline.

“I do not wish to see any gentleman,” she stammered. “I only wish to go and find my friend. Really, it is long past time I was gone…”

“What are you so afraid of, child? This gentleman means you no harm.”

“He is not…a police officer?”

Miss Susan smiled, confused.

“As a matter of fact he is. Mrs Audley, do you have some trouble? Would you care to tell me about it, before he arrives here? Perhaps I can help.”

The fact that Miss Susan still referred to Grace by her assumed name offered some comfort. After all, perhaps it was not Jedediah she expected.

“No trouble,” croaked Grace. “I do not want any trouble. Please, just let me go and there will be no trouble brought to your door, I swear.”

“My dear, you are terrified.” Miss Susan came to crouch before Grace, taking her trembling hand. “Who is it that you fear so? Was your husband’s death not accidental? Was he killed? Are people pursuing you for his debts?”

No, thank God Miss Susan did not know the truth, and the visitor could not be Jedediah.

She took a long breath.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, he had some creditors, and now that he is dead, I am liable.”

“You poor thing,” she said. “And are you quite friendless?”

Grace nodded.

“Apart from my one friend,” she said. “But she is in service in a big house in town. I will not be able to stay with her, I fear.”

“You can stay here,” said Susan, stroking her hand. “If you like. I may… I may be able to offer you some work.”

“Would you?” Grace’s eyes widened with hope. Surely this would be as good a place as any to hide. It was comfortable and the inhabitants seemed friendly. She could save up some money until she had enough to…what? She had no coherent plan. Her only intent was to keep herself clear of Jedediah.

“Perhaps,” said Susan. “But you may not like the work. It is not for everyone.”

“Tell me what it is.”

But a knock on the door interrupted their tête-à-tête and Miss Susan composed herself, standing with self-contained dignity by the mantel.

“This is your police officer?” whispered Grace. “I do not wish to see him. Please, let me hide.”

“Inspector Reid is not a debt collector, child,” said Susan. “He will not harm you.”

 _Inspector Reid_. She let out a sigh. It was not a name she knew, and therefore not a close colleague of Jedediah’s.

The man, when he was shown in, was impressively tall and broad. His demeanour was grave – Grace thought she even detected a clouded sadness in the vivid blue eyes – and his voice, when he spoke, was beautifully low and reassuring.

“Mrs Audley, I am Inspector Reid of H-Division, Leman Street station. I was sorry to hear of what happened to you the other day. How are you now?”

“I’m quite well, thank you,” said Grace. Reid pulled up a chair opposite her, and Susan made an unobtrustive exit. “Have you found the people that robbed me? I am told they were mere children.”

“That is not what I am here about,” said Reid. “Although I can assure you, my constables are working on it.”

Grace swallowed, her heart beginning to flutter.

“What, then…what could you want of me?”

“Miss Hart – Susan – tells me that you are the widow of a man recently dead.”

“That’s…right.”

“Where are you from, Mrs Audley?”

“From…Limehouse.” Somehow, it was not at all easy to lie whilst this man looked into your face. In fact, it was close to impossible.

“Ah, as I understood it. Yet I have checked the register of births and deaths for that district and there is no record of an Audley. Death occurred, you told Miss Hart, on Thursday last. Is that correct?”

“It…” Her voice dried up in her throat. She stared at Reid, unable to move or speak.

“Mrs Audley?” He spoke so gently, and yet she felt the words fall on her head like death knells.

“Why, what is it to you?” she burst out with sudden passion. “I have done no wrong. I only want to get far away from this part of London where I can be safe.” She felt tears dazzle in her eyes, clutching tight at the neck of her gown.

Reid cocked his head to one side, a look of unbearable sympathy in his eyes.

“You are running from something, or somebody, are you not?” he said.

When she made no answer, he removed from his inner pocket a rolled-up bill, which he proceeded to unfurl before her eyes.

She cried out, putting a hand over her mouth, as her own portrait was revealed to her, underneath the legend: “MISSING. From Limehouse. Reward offered.” Beneath her pensive visage was her name in large block capitals. “ **Mrs Grace Eleanor Shine**.”


	15. Chapter 15

Inspector Reid kept the Missing Person bill in front of Grace’s eyes for as long as it took her to shut them and croak, “That is not me.”

“Oh, now, come. It is not a sketch. It is a photograph, and she is identical to you. This is you. You are this lady, missing from Limehouse, and most desperately sought by one man in particular.”

“Most desperately,” she repeated unhappily.

“Most desperately, to the extent that he has even shown his face in my station, which I never thought to come to pass again.”

“And you will tell him I am here.” She raised her eyes to Reid’s, trying to study their expression. Was it one of mercy or of simple duty?

“I have told him nothing, and will tell him nothing without your permission,” he said.

Grace caught a little breath of stunned surprise.

“You will not? Do you mean it?”

Reid put his hands in his lap, bending a little further towards her so that there was something of a conspiratorial attitude between them.

“I would not marry my dog – had I a dog – to Jedediah Shine. If you do not wish to be married to him, then it comes as no surprise to me.”

“Oh! You are Abberline’s man!” Some words of her father’s spoken months before came swiftly back into her mind. She couldn’t swear to the officer’s name, but there had been talk of a Whitechapel policeman who had done his level best to bring her husband to some kind of justice.

“And you are Councillor Culford’s daughter,” replied Reid, smiling now. “Yes. Be reassured, you need fear nothing from me. I will do all I can to protect you from this scourge you have unknowingly joined yourself to.”

“When he came to your station…?”

“I took great pleasure in showing him the door,” said Reid. “Under threat of making his forcible reacquaintance with my sergeant, Bennett Drake.”

“Bennett Drake?”

“His nemesis in the boxing ring, at the last Divisional Championship.”

“Oh. He never told me why he had given up boxing.”

“I am sure he did not. Miss Culford – I cannot quite bring myself to call you Mrs Shine…”

She smiled painfully at him. All her breath, so long pent up, was streaming around her lungs like the wild winds.

“Miss Culford,” he reiterated, “I can offer you a safe house to stay in, for as long as you need one. But I must ask something of you in return.”

“Please name it,” she said, close to weeping with relief. “I am so very afraid that he will find me.”

“I would like your help in building the case against him.”

“Oh.” She stared at him, dismayed at having to have anything to do with such a risky undertaking. “I do not know…I do not think there is any way I could help you…”

“Now, think carefully, Miss Culford. You have left him for a reason. Think about those reasons. What are they?”

“Because I felt like a prisoner. And. He was not always kind to me. And.”

She could not bring herself to mention the dead Chinese man from the river. The thought of involving herself in a criminal case against her own husband made her feel sick with dread. They had never been able to make anything stick before, so why should her testimony make any difference?

“And?” encouraged Reid gently.

“I do not know. I cannot say.”

“You are afraid of the consequences, perhaps, if you speak against him?”

She nodded, gazing saucer-eyed at him.

“You will be well looked after, once it is all over – you and the child. I know your father’s circumstances are not ideal but I would personally make sure that you did not find yourself in the kind of straits suffered by most families of felons.”

She took a sharp breath. Yes, because that is what she would be – she and her unlucky babe. The shamed dependents of a notorious criminal. For the rest of her life, people would point and nudge each other. There would never be any escape. And besides, however much she wished never to clap eyes on Jedediah again, she could not see him sent to the gallows.

“The future you ask me to make for my child – I cannot subject him to it,” she said, shaking her head. “You must not ask me to do it. It is not fair.”

“You can go far away from London, where nobody will know you,” suggested Reid.

“Jedediah is not a good man,” she said, finding her voice and her will. “But I do not want to hang him.”

“Then you are aware that he has committed a capital crime?” said Reid. “Are you also aware that to withhold evidence relating to such implicates you in those crimes?”

She stood up abruptly. “And now you threaten me. Are all policemen the same, then? I can stay here and be threatened by you, or I can go back to Jedediah and be threatened by him. It seems my choices are severely limited. Perhaps I should simply find a boat in the docks that will carry me as far away as I can go from you both.”

“Miss Culford, please, sit down. I did not intend to threaten you. I simply wish to bring a guilty man to justice, and relieve you of your anxieties into the bargain. Please.”

She sat down again, wary, longing for Reid to leave.

“I have no evidence to offer,” she said flatly. “I have seen nothing and he has told me nothing. Whatever it is you know of him, I am not aware of it. My reasons for leaving him are purely personal and bear no relation to any kind of criminal activity.”

She hoped God might forgive her for the half-lie.

“And yet your father tells me that you were much oppressed by the front page story about the drowned Chinaman, on the day you took flight.”

“Yes…because…because my father had told me of him… I do not know what happened to him. How or why he died. I do not know.”

“Your father told you of him _on the very day_ that you went to find Jedediah Shine. You told him, did you not, of this unfortunate man and his place in…”

“I had to tell him! The man was not a witness to anything – he was going to lie under oath. My father told me so. You can say what you like about Jedediah, but those ends do not justify your means. Whatever it is you think he has done.”

“Whatever it is we _think_ he has done? My dear Miss Culford, we know for absolute certain that he is guilty of a number of counts of premeditated murder. Until now, all we have had is the word of an unreliable witness who could not be called to the box – and besides, the man is now dead – but _you_ , Miss Culford…”

“Murder? Oh, I will not believe it. I cannot believe it. He is not a good man, but a murderer many times over? No.”

“What did you think had happened to the Chinese man?”

“I don’t know…a fight? A struggle? A terrible accident. Jedediah may not have had anything to do with it after all. Who saw it, or knew what occurred? Besides, a wife cannot testify against her husband, so what use am I?”

“You cannot testify, no, but you can help us, as we wish to help you.”

There was a knock at the door. Grace flinched and rose a little from her seat.

“I see you are very nervous of him,” said Reid. “What did he do to you? Did he hurt you? We could have him for that, you know. Do you have visible marks?”

“No, no, I have none. He has never hurt me. Not deliberately.”

“And do you think he would be as loyal to you as you apparently are to him? Has he told you of your predecessor, the Chinese woman, Blush Pang?”

Grace held her breath. The Chinese woman! Now she would know the truth. She shook her head.

“She killed her brother for him. Do you think he lifted a hand to help her? No. He left her to her fate. Never even came to visit her before she was extradited back to China.”

“She killed her own brother?” repeated Grace in wonder. “For him?”

“Just last year,” said Reid. “It would appear that he is very much over the attachment. I wonder how soon he will forget about you?”

“She was not his wife. I am.”

“Although you do not want to be.”

She shut her eyes, her head aching with the enormity of it all.

“Inspector, I must beg you to leave me be. What you have said weighs heavily on my mind…I find I cannot take it in.”

“Well, I understand,” he said with a sigh. “We will speak again of this. In the meantime, I will have a cab sent round to take you to a safe house. I do not think your father would appreciate your staying here for much longer.”

“Why not?” Grace opened her eyes. “They have all been very kind, and it is quite comfortable.”

Reid smiled forlornly.

“All the same, there is a better place for you.”

“Inspector,” she said, as he rose to leave. “Will my father be able to visit me there?”

Reid shook his head. “Shine will have eyes on him, wherever he goes. It would not be safe. Once we have him safe under lock and key, all will be well for you.”

“I see. Thank you, Inspector. Goodbye.”

She was loth to make her farewells to Miss Susan, Julia and the other ladies of the house who had treated her so well.

“Remember, sweet one,” said Miss Susan, before they parted company at the door. “If you should find yourself in dire need, you can always come to me.”

“You are so very kind,” said Grace, noticing that a couple of the girls smirked at each other.

She climbed into the hansom, wondering where among all these teeming streets it might take her, and whether the company would be as congenial as that at Miss Susan’s house. Really, she wanted nothing more than to go home – but to her old home, in Chelsea, with her parents, and things the way they were before the stillbirth of her brother. That rosy past seemed very much safer and more certain than any version of the future she was able to visualise.

At least, she told herself, Reid and her father combined could keep Jedediah away from her, even if she did not help them to hang him.

“I need never see him again,” she told herself, sitting back, trying to remain remote from the clamour outside. “I will go somewhere he can never find me, if they will let me have some money. Somewhere pleasant, in the countryside.”

She looked out of the window again, recognising some of the shop fronts. Was this the Commercial Road? If so, they were heading east, which was not what she had expected.

Yes, this was certainly the Commercial Road, and as they headed over the Stepney station bridge, Grace leant forwards, eager to communicate with the driver.

“Excuse me,” she cried. “But where are we going? This road is taking us into Limehouse, and I would really rather not…”

But the driver made no reply, simply cracking the whip over the horse to make it go faster.

Grace, thoroughly unnerved now, began to work on the door, thinking that if the cab had to slow in traffic she could jump out before reaching the dreaded environs of her former marital home. But the traffic was unusually thin for this bustling thoroughfare, and the cab bowled along freely until it began to slow at just the point Grace had been dreading.

“No!” she cried, fiddling desperately with the catch. “This is not right. You cannot take me here. You have been given the wrong direction. Stop and let me out, please.”

But the coachman paid no heed. As soon as the horse’s plod was slow enough, Grace released the catch and flung herself out of the cab, falling in a sprawl on the dusty pavement.

Before she could pick herself up, somebody else had a hold of her, raising her to her feet to face him.

“Well, well, my little lost sheep,” said Jedediah. “Welcome home.”


	16. Chapter 16

Whimpering with fear and the pain of a twisted ankle, Grace could do nothing but submit as Jedediah led her, limping, up the steps and into the house.

In the hallway, Mrs Laverack stood with her arms folded and an expression of outraged triumph on her face.

“Tea, please, Mrs Laverack,” said Jedediah, his arm tightening around Grace’s waist prior to negotiating the staircase.

“How has this happened?” wept Grace. “Who was it betrayed me?”

“I would not speak of betrayal if I were you, my love,” said Jedediah, opening the door to their rooms and placing her carefully on an armchair.

“Surely Inspector Reid did not tell you.”

Jedediah knelt in front of her and set to unlacing and removing her boots.

“What, Steady Eddie?” He chuckled bitterly. “Not he. But I have a special eye kept on Leman Street station at all times, and I was told something was afoot. From thence, it was not difficult to ascertain your whereabouts. My cabman works at the rank favoured by Reid and he knew to take the commission.”

Taking one of her boots in his hand, Jedediah took a paring knife from the table and commenced separating the sole from the upper.

“What?” he said, looking up at her with a chilling smile. “Did you truly think you could keep yourself hidden from me? A sad mistake to make, Grace. I trust it shall not be made again.”

He threw the ruined boot aside and picked up the other.

“What are you doing to my boots?”

“You will have no use for them for a while.”

“You can’t keep me prisoner!”

“I can do whatever I choose, my dear. Stand up.”

Another boot fell in a savaged heap and Jedediah stood, looming over her, offering his hand.

Confused and terrified, Grace took it, then yelped with alarm when Jedediah began to unbutton her jacket.

“What do you mean to…?” she breathed.

He spun her around by the shoulder and unbuttoned her dress all the way down. Grace began to weep afresh.

“Please do not hurt me,” she begged.

Jedediah made her step out of the dress, and all its petticoats, then he gathered them together with the jacket and threw them in one big pile on to the fire.

Grace, standing in her corset, chemise and stockings, covered her mouth and wailed into her hand.

Jedediah, standing behind her, kept his heavy hand upon her shoulder, closing it tight so that his thumb pressed into the base of her neck.

It was thus that Mrs Laverack found them when she came in with the tea tray. She said nothing, but set it down with a clatter and left the room.

“You need not fear that I will ever hurt you,” said Jedediah softly. “It will not come to that. It is enough that you know I could.”

She darted a look at him. He was gazing into the fire, lost in contemplation.

“You know what I could do to you,” he said, in the same trace-like tones. “In all my life, only one man has bested me in a fair fight, and that is a man I bested myself more than once. So you will know better than to provoke me, I am sure, for, while you can behave very recklessly, you are not a fool. Is it not so?”

“Is…what…?” Her tears fell off her chin, soaking the gathered neckline of her chemise.

“You will not provoke me again,” he said. “Will you?”

She shook her head, looking down as the heat from the fire began to burn her face.

“Promise me,” he said, squeezing her shoulder so hard she knew he would leave a bruise.

“I promise,” she hiccupped.

“There now,” he said, turning her around and taking her into his arms. “All is well again.”

She poured her tears on to the birds of paradise that adorned his waistcoat, too utterly drained to do anything but accept her defeat.

“Shall we take tea?” he whispered.

He had her sit on a cushion at his feet while he poured the dark stewed brew into its cups. She leant back against his leg, wondering what would happen if she seized the pot of boiling water and poured it into his lap.

“I have heard,” he said, handing her her cup, “that some women do not take well to pregnancy. There are women who become deluded, or melancholy. They become unable to answer for their actions, and all that can be done is to protect them from the harm their own weakness of mind might bring upon them.”

“I am not deluded,” said Grace, although she felt unable to refute the accusation of melancholy. “My mind is not weak.”

“Women thus afflicted,” continued Jedediah, ignoring her interjection, “are seldom aware of their affliction. They will swear that they are sound in mind, but they are not.”

He took a meditative sip of his tea.

“They should be kept safe, prevented from wandering,” he said. “In confinement. That is what they call the late stage of pregnancy, is it not? In your case, it will simply be longer.”

“You burned my clothes.”

“A precaution, my love. It is all for your benefit. You must be kept safe. I will not allow any harm to come to you or the child.”

“My father will come. He will want to take me home.”

“This is your home. You will not go with him. He is not to cross my threshold.”

“Perhaps I will not be able to prevent him. Knowing what he knows, I wonder that he did not come before.”

“Your father knows nothing,” growled Jedediah. “He thinks he knows a great deal, but he has no proof for any of it, and he never will.” He bent his face to hers, staring hard into it. “I suppose Reid asked you to incriminate me?”

She nodded.

“I’ll wager he thought his seat at the right hand of God had been attained early, having you in his clutches.” His hands formed reflexive fists, his brow as dark as Grace had ever seen it. “You are lucky that I am such a forgiving husband, Grace. Very lucky.”

She swallowed, looking down into her tea.

“So, what did you tell him?”

“There was nothing I could tell him,” she whispered. “And even if there had been, I would not have done so.”

Jedediah grunted with surprised satisfaction. “You would not?”

She shook her head. “I do not believe in judicial murder. Especially when it comes to the father of my child.”

He smiled, kissed her forehead. She shivered at the contact.

“Bless your tender heart,” he murmured.

“But…Jedediah,” she faltered. “I did wonder…and I still wonder…what happened to Zhang Wei?”

“To whom?” he said, raising his eyebrows.

“Oh, you _know_. The drowned man, washed up at the Albert Dock. Was he the man who thought to incriminate you on the word of his dead associate? The man I told you about that night?”

“The body was of a known opium trader,” said Jedediah. “He was most likely killed by a rival.”

He sat back in his chair and took up his teacup once more.

Grace tensed, preparing to throw herself into the dark unknown.

“Reid said…”

She felt Jedediah’s leg move against her back.

“What did Reid say?”

“He said you were guilty…of many murders. And the only witness they ever had was dead now. Why does he think this, Jedediah?”

She dared to raise her eyes to him, widening them in heartfelt appeal.

Jedediah put down his teacup and grazed her cheek with his knuckles, holding her chin in his hand so that she could not look away.

“Because it suits him to,” he said. “He has held a grudge against me this past year and more. It goes back to the death of one of my officers after an accident. Reid would have it that it was murder, and so would I – each of us accusing the other. It is a game of his, my love. Nothing more. And you have been caught up as a pawn, much against my wishes.”

“You think Reid killed your officer?”

“I know for certain that he injected him with a heavy dose of morphine. On that first occasion, the officer survived…but he died soon after, of an overdose. The evidence against him was overwhelming, but Abberline dismissed the charge.”

Grace stared up at Jedediah, unblinking. Could this be true? Somehow she did not picture Reid as a killer, and yet it was preferable to the alternative view. If only it could be true that Jedediah was innocent, maligned by her father and those that sought to accuse him. If only all his talk of wanting to protect her and the child was not a pretext for imprisonment and close control.

Could that be true? Could it really?

“I want to believe you,” she said.

“Then, believe me,” he said, impassioned, his face lowering over hers. “If I cannot rely on your loyalty and good faith, then I have nothing. My long years of dedication to this work have left me friendless. You must know how large the criminal class of this district is, and how much of my life I have given to keeping it down. And what is my reward? Suspicion, accusation, perfidy – even from my own wife. How am I to bear this, Grace?”

She looked into him, willing herself to see a good man wronged. His eyes burned green fire at her; if innocence could be measured by the force of his gaze then he was indeed blameless.

“I have known my father all my life, and you a matter of weeks,” she said, reaching out and putting a hand on his knee.

He covered it with one of his own, his expression softening.

“I know that, love, and I take it into account. You are not to be blamed for the process of indoctrination against me he subjected you to. But I am your husband now. You made solemn vows before God, and it is your duty to stand at my side – your duty to me and to this little one.”

He moved his hand to rest against her corseted stomach.

“Now, I will not pretend,” he said quietly, “that I have lived a blameless life. In the past, I took whatever action I deemed necessary to achieve my desired ends. Sometimes, to keep the peace, you must go to war. I make no apology for that. I am determined, yes indeed, and I am ruthless, but there is no surviving this place without a strong measure of those qualities.”

“I am a spoil of war,” said Grace.

“No, do not misunderstand me. You are very much more than that. You, and the child inside you, are my chance of redemption. I am weary of this fight and wish for nothing more than to find peace for us all, where I can be a different man, the man I could have been in a different place and time.”

 

“How is such peace to be found?”

“I have applied for a promotion,” he said. “A superintendent post in the Essex county constabulary.”

“You intend for us to leave London?”

“And start a new life,” he confirmed. “Away from all that threatens to drag us into the mire. Think of it, love. We can live by the sea.”

“I should like that,” she said, to herself more than to him.

“Then forget all that has past, and look to the future.” His eyes dimmed; she thought there might be tears in them. “I deserve this chance,” he said. “I have earned my happiness, and I will have it.”

He did not say ‘at any cost’ but Grace heard it clearly enough. She laid her head against his leg, listless with the emotional toll the last days had had on her.

“You are bound to me in the eyes of God and the world, and I have the right to expect your unmixed loyalty,” he said, stroking her hair. “Is it not so?”

She nodded slowly, the cloth of his trousers chafing the side of her face.

“Let me hear it,” he said. “Tell me.”

“I am yours,” she said.


	17. Chapter 17

Grace knelt on the bed in her nightgown, watching Jedediah perform his evening ablutions. A trim of the whiskers, a splash of cold water on the face, the running of a comb through his hair, which became more unruly as the macadamia oil wore off during the course of the day, and he was ready to join her.

“How is your ankle now?” he asked, seating himself with a creak on the mattress and taking her foot into his lap for inspection.

“Better,” she said. He spanned it with his hand and pressed, causing no more than a slight twinge.

“All the same, it was foolhardy of you to jump from that cab. You could have damaged yourself or the child. I take it all is well there?” He glanced down at her stomach.

“I think so. Nothing seems amiss, at least.”

He released her foot and took his place opposite her, raking her up and down with a jealous eye.

“My wife,” he said with low deliberation, “kept in a whorehouse.”

“In a…?” She frowned, failing to understand the import of his words.

“Did they teach you anything? Reid’s pet harlots? Any tricks of the trade?”

He took her chin in his hand, roughly enough to make her gasp.

“I don’t know…what you mean…”

His fingers relaxed their grip and he stroked her hair back from her face.

“I hope not, my love,” he said. “Or I shall have to have strong words with those Whitechapel ponces. I daresay they are all laughing into their sleeves about my wife lying in a tart’s bed.”

“I lay in a bed that was just like any other,” she insisted. “The room was very luxuriously furnished, it is true, but other than that…”

“And did any punters lay eyes on you, girl? Any men passing through the house?”

“There were men in the house at times, but I heard rather than saw them. I had dealings only with Miss Susan and a girl called Julia.”

“And Reid,” added Jedediah in a growl.

“And Inspector Reid,” she conceded, looking down as far as she could with her face still angled to his.

“I should kill him.”

“Please…”

“But I have made a promise to myself, and I shall make it to you also. My dark days are past. There will be no more of that. From now, all is new and the slate shall be clean.”

Grace released a breath, one that had been held high in her chest ever since Jedediah had come to the bed.

He pulled her into him so that her head lay against his shoulder and stroked her hair with soothing tenderness.

“Be my loyal, loving wife and you shall have the best husband any woman could wish for – and the best father for your babes. While our opponents stew in these miserable slums for the rest of their days, we shall be free and happy.”

“By the sea,” she whispered.

“Yes. By the sea.” He kissed the top of her head. “Look at me now.”

She raised her eyes to his. He held the back of her neck, rubbing his thumb into the soft flesh.

“I have gone easy on you for what you have done to me,” he said. “I will allow you this one mistake, for you are young and have much to learn. Be thankful for my forebearance, and be very sure that any more mistakes will not be so tolerated. Learn this lesson well, and you will save yourself other, harsher ones in the future. Do you mind me, madam?”

She shut her eyes and swallowed, nodding.

“Tell me.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It will not happen again.”

Binding her in his arms, he pressed his lips to hers. She felt again the bristle of his moustache and the surprising tyranny of his tongue pushing into her mouth. She let it all happen, resigned now to her fate, consoling herself with the thought that he was not one of those cold, grudge-bearing men who would make her pay for what she had done over the course of months and years.

Perhaps, after all, there was a way to happiness with him, if only they could escape this violent crucible in which they lived.

_I will choose to believe him_ , she thought, falling deeper into the kiss, letting it awaken the possibility of feeling pleasure in her flesh again. _I will take his word that he is maligned and the victim of misguided persecution from Reid and the others. I will choose the man I made vows to, and not the men I owe nothing._

Her weariness transmuted into sparks of desire, her pulse quickening as she sank further into the delight of being held in strong arms. Here, in her marriage bed, was uncomplicated joy. Why not just take it?

“Lie on your back, my girl.” Her husband’s voice was hoarse in her ear. “And let me remind you where you belong.”

She belonged beneath him, her legs open to welcome him in, joined with him. He reinforced this message with his customary vigour, but he did not forget to be mindful of her pleasure. When she fell into the blissful vortex of her release, she knew that this was what made her his, much more surely than if he had simply taken her with regard only for his enjoyment. His ability to undo her in this way gave him more power over her than any other act of physical domination.

“There, there, girl,” he eased her through her sobbing climax. “Is that what you needed?”

She clung to him, beyond all rational thought, knowing only that her body and her mind could never be as one, and thus she should concede victory to her body and forget the fight. And her body was Jedediah’s. She felt the truth of it as he spent within her, his jaw clenched and eyes sightless, like those of a madman.

There could be no more escape from him. What the bible said was true – they were one flesh.

“Soon we will be away from this place,” he said, some time later, caressing her face as she lay nestled in to him. “I shall hand my resignation in tomorrow. We can be on the coast within a month.”

“At Southend?”

“Southend, or somewhere closer to my new division. Out of here, at any rate.”

There was a loud bang on the front door. Jedediah sat up, flattening down his hair, which was now in full rebellion.

“I wonder who that might be,” he said, in tones that suggested he well knew.

“Oh, is it my father?” Grace tried to arrange her rucked nightgown back into order.

“No, you stay there, my girl. I will deal with it myself.”

But Grace was unable to obey this command, creeping to the bedroom door and then going into the front room once Jedediah had put on his dressing gown and joined a grumpy-sounding Mrs Laverack in the downstairs hall.

Peering through the curtains, she saw a dark figure on the stoop, but she could not discern features. All the same, the figure was the same size and general shape as her father, and a stab of fear for him pierced her heart.

“Shine!”

Yes, that was his voice.

“Open up. Where is my daughter? What have you done with her?”

She flinched back a little as the front door opened, unwilling to be seen by Jedediah.

“Do you speak of my wife, Councillor?” Jedediah stood four square and unintimidated in the doorway.

“Where is she? I believed her to be in a safe house in Whitechapel but now I am told she never arrived. What have you done with her, you devil?”

“She came back to me,” said Jedediah. “It was no more than a tiff, soon settled. She is back where she belongs.” He paused and spoke with gloating triumph. “In my bed.”

“I refuse to believe it. Reid told me she was terrified of you when he interviewed her. She would not have returned of her own free will. Show her to me. Let me speak with her.”

“It is past midnight, councillor, and she is sleeping.”

“I insist on seeing her. I will not leave until I have laid eyes on her and seen for myself that she is safe and well. You may shut the door on me if you wish, but I will simply knock on it for the rest of the night.”

There was a brief silence, then Jedediah said, “Very well. Wait there. You shall see her.”

Grace scampered rapidly back to the bedroom, her heart racing.

Seconds later, Jedediah strode back in.

“What is happening?” she asked, wide-eyed.

“Put on your robe and come,” said Jedediah, removing it from the hook on the back of the door and throwing it to her. “Your father wants proof that I have not killed you.”

Grace wrapped herself up and allowed herself to be led by the hand out of their rooms and into the dark and draughty downstairs hall.

“Papa,” she said tentatively.

His face went through an extraordinary range of expressions, bringing tears to Grace’s own eyes.

“My girl,” he said brokenly. “Oh, what has he done to you? Why are you with him?”

“As you see,” said Jedediah brusquely, “she lives and is in the best of health. Now I will wish you a very good night, sir.”

He moved to shut the door, but Councillor Culford sprang forward, on to the very threshold.

“Grace,” he said urgently. “Come home with me. Your mother and I have long forgiven any wrong we felt you might have done us. We know who is truly to blame for your…” He paused, choking. “Fall from virtue. If you will only come back, all will be as it was.”

“How can I come back?” she said, tears dropping from her eyes. “I am married. I have made vows.”

“Under false pretences, under duress,” pleaded Culford. “He seduced you and forced the match. Even if the marriage stands in the eyes of the law, the eyes of God will see it for what it is – a disgraceful mockery of the sacrament.”

“Councillor,” said Jedediah wearily. “She is staying with me and there is no more to it than that. Now, will you go quietly or must I show you the hospitality of my lock-up for the night?”

“Oh,” gasped Grace, aghast at the idea that Jedediah might actually do this.

“Just tell me,” said Culford, his whole body interposed between the door and the frame as Jedediah tried to shut it. “Just tell me, Grace, that you went back to him willingly. Just tell me that and I will go.”

“I…” She looked helplessly at him.

Jedediah squeezed her wrist.

“I did,” she blurted. “I came back… I cannot leave him.”

“Cannot?” Culford picked up on the implication. “He will not let you. Oh, you evil…”

What happened next was sudden, a jumble of actions that Grace could not put in order for some time afterwards.

Her father was pushed backwards on to the top step by the pressure of the closing door, but before it could shut in his face, he drew out a short blade.

“You let her go,” he raved. The blade flashed. Grace screamed and ran back, released from Jedediah’s grasp, landing with a bump against the well-upholstered bosom of Mrs Laverack.

Jedediah side-stepped the attack and put a halt to it with a thunderous right hook that felled Culford at a stroke, sending him backwards down the steps at shocking velocity.

Grace, screaming with horror, ran out, past Jedediah, to where her father lay on the pavement, lifeless, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, and his neck broken at a sickening angle.

“He is dead,” she cried, waking all the street from Limehouse Town Hall to the church gardens. “You have killed him.”


	18. Chapter 18

Grace put her newborn boy, sleepy with milk-feeding, into his cradle and rocked it gently for a while before going out to watch the sun setting.

She sat on the little bench underneath the single window of her low whitewashed fisher cottage and gazed out at the silvering sea. The rent was cheap, but she still struggled to pay it. Mama remitted what funds she could spare, but they were not many. All Grace had inherited from her father were debts and, while Jedediah’s police salary remained suspended pending his trial, she had very little to rely on. Once or twice, she had thought of applying for parish relief, but had stopped herself each time.

In the end, she had been saved by the intervention of Mr Galbraith. How bitter it had been to take charity from this old adversary, but as he said, he had always found her husband a great man to deal with and he wanted only to assist his old colleague in his time of need.

“Tell me what I should do,” she bade the lowering sun, but it would not.

When Jedediah had been arrested – by none other than his nemesis, Inspector Reid – for the murder of Councillor Henry Culford, she had been unable to speak on his behalf. The shock of what had happened struck her mute for a great many days, and no matter how many officers beseeched her for her statement, she could give none, nor even make sense of what passed in her head.

For those weeks, she became living proof of Jedediah’s old taunts, and hid from her reality behind the protective veil of madness. Thus, Jedediah’s claim that the killing was in self-defence had no witness corroboration – for Mrs Laverack had been too far back in darkness to see anything – and he was charged with first degree murder.

The good offices of her mother – traumatised into renouncing the bottle and making her daughter’s recovery the great work of her life – eased Grace’s broken-mindedness and brought her slowly back into the living world again. By this time, her pregnancy was well advanced and she became preoccupied with plans for the child’s birth and early life, using this as a defence against the dark thoughts and memories of her life before.

She tried, as hard as she could, to pretend Jedediah had never existed.

But now, the child was born, and he was Jedediah’s son – everything proclaimed it, from his green cat’s eyes to his tough little fists  - and she could no longer turn her face from that truth.

While she sat here, watching the last golden rays melt over the rippling deep, her boy’s father was locked in a cell, contemplating his death on the scaffold.

Perhaps – even probably – it was a well-deserved death. Even if his killing of her father had been in self-defence, she felt that the accusations that had dogged him must have had substance, or why would such men as her father and Inspector Reid have persisted in them?

One man’s death might be accidental, but all of those others…

Yes, perhaps this was justice, after all.

And then her child cried, and she doubted it again.

By the time darkness fell, she had come to a decision.

She went into the cottage, lifted the boy from his crib, wrapped him warm and secured him on her back, then set off down the long dirt track that led to the London turnpike.

*

It was three days before she was permitted to visit her husband.

Newgate Prison, dark and damp and permeated with the suffering of centuries, made her blood run cold as she traversed its gloomy courtyards and passages behind the warder, her baby in her arms. It was used now only for those condemned to death, or awaiting an Old Bailey trial.

Jedediah’s trial had opened just the day before. She had not gone to the Old Bailey to watch it. It was expected to last three or four days. Execution, if judged appropriate, would swiftly follow.

A heavy door opened on to a single cell, walled up in bare brick, with only a bare bunk, a table and a chamber pot to act as furniture. On the bunk, Jedediah lay, staring at the ceiling.

“Not today, thank you,” he drawled, his gaze still fixed above him.

“Visitor for you, Mr Shine,” said the warder.

“Jedediah,” said Grace, fighting back the urge to turn tail and run. Even now, in this pathetic state, her husband had the power to strike fear into her heart.

He sat bolt upright and stared at her as if she were a spirit come to haunt him.

“Grace,” he said, rising from the bunk.

She held out her bundle.

“Here is your son,” she said.

Jedediah bent his glistening eyes to the child, but he was able only to give him the most cursory glance before he had to look away.

“Why do you bring him here… Is it to taunt me with what I may never have?”

“No, no, indeed. Can we be alone?” she appealed to the warder, but he shook his head with an apologetic grimace. “May I sit down?” she asked Jedediah.

He went and sat heavily on the bunk, leaving space for her to move up beside him.

She waited while he held his head in his hands, and watched his shoulders shake. This was something she had never thought to see, and she felt her heart break into pieces.

“I do not know what to call him,” she said.

Jedediah looked up at her, with such red, ruined eyes that she felt tears of her own form in sympathy.

“Best you do not name him after me,” he said.

“Oh,” said Grace, distressed beyond measure. “This is cruel. Will you hold him?”

Jedediah took the bundle awkwardly, clearly unused to the necessity of gentleness.

“I am glad we have met,” he whispered to the baby. “Though I do not expect we will do so again, in this life or the next.”

“Oh, Jedediah…”

“For I will not be going to that good place your mama is bound for, and I trust and hope she will make it her life’s work to see that you get there also.”

“I will go to your lawyer,” said Grace. “Only give me his name. I will go to him and tell him what happened.”

Jedediah gave her a grave look.

“It will be too little, too late,” he said with resignation. “And who is to say I do not deserve the noose? I have done bad things, Grace, though I thought them needful at the time. Nonetheless, I will not be judged kindly at the last.”

“As you are judged, so will my boy be judged, as the son of a hanged man, and it is not fair,” said Grace passionately. “He has done nothing to deserve it. I want him to know his father.”

Jedediah was silent for a long time, looking down at the baby, who slept on, oblivious.

“Instead, history is doomed to repeat itself,” he said, running one thumb across the child’s brow. “For I never knew mine.”

“Did you not?”

He shook his head slowly. “Shine was the name of my mother. Irish girl, came over during the famine with her sisters, managed to get a place with some rich family, Islington way. Got booted out when it was known she expected a child. I suppose my father was one of the sons of that family. I’ve never cared enough to find out. Grew up in the Clerkenwell slums – Saffron Hill, if you know it. Mostly knocked down now. Oh, a rough area, it was, rough as anything you’ll ever see in Limehouse. Coppers wouldn’t go through it without a local clergyman as escort, and even then they didn’t wear the uniform.”

“Heavens.”

“And if the coppers found it rough, you can bet a scrawny little whippersnapper such as I was found it doubly so. But I acquitted myself with distinction at the ragged school and came to the attention of the curate, who introduced me to the boxing ring. It was the saving and the making of me, and that curate saw that I made it through school so I got a decent education and was fit to join the police, once I was old enough. It was that or join a swell mob, and believe me, many many more became swell mobsmen than coppers on old Saffron Hill.”

“Is your mother still alive?”

Jedediah shook his head. “Took up with a coster with a nasty temper and a taste for the hard stuff. Knocked her about until I knocked the teeth out of his head at fifteen. But she didn’t live long after that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Everything I have done,” he said forcefully, handing the child back to Grace as he began to bawl, “has been done against the tide of this rotten world we live in. I have got where I have because I have refused to be knocked down by any man. Whoever stood in my way – well, whether I used my fists or a length of cheese wire, they did not stand there for long. But I never meant to kill your pa, Grace, and I hope you know that.”

“I do know it,” she said, holding the child to her breast to quell his lusty cries. “I know it was done in self defence.”

“But you did not see fit to tell Reid so. Well, I understand. You had your chance for revenge on me, and you took it. I have lived by the sword, and so will I die. I only ask that you will not remember me too harshly.”

“No, it was not revenge that kept me silent,” she said. “Did nobody tell you that I was unwell? That I could not speak or act on my own behalf for almost four months afterward?”

His dull eyes brightened just a little as he surveyed her.

“No,” he said. “Nobody did.”

“I do not know if I would have acted to save you,” she said. “It has preyed on my mind these last months that I have not come forward. I had to grieve my father first, though. I hope you understand that, though I will forgive it if you do not. It wasn’t until the boy was born that the dilemma became more urgent.”

“And now you will speak up for me?”

“If I can. If they will listen.”

He put his hand on hers, squeezing it gently.

“If I could have my time again,” he said, “there’s one thing, among many, that I would seek to change. I would be kinder to you.”

She drew a quick breath. “All those lives you took?”

“Most were worth little,” he said. “But you… I did not value you as I should have done. If you had never sought to run from me…”

“Things might have been different. We can never know.”

“I cannot claim to know much about love, but I was fond of you, after my fashion.”

“It was not all bad,” she said.

“Time’s up,” said the warder, jingling his keys.

“Here, warder, fetch me pen and paper. I need to give my wife the name of my lawyer. It seems there is a slim chance I might make it out of here alive.”

Grace, with her baby squalling in her arms, took the proffered details and bent to kiss her husband’s iron-tasting brow.

“I hope I will see you out of this place,”  she said.

He took her fingers tightly in his and held them against his dry, cracked lips.

“Hope is all we have,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's where I'm going to leave it, folks - kind of a 'create your own ending' - because I'm genuinely conflicted about whether to let him off or not. I mean, on the one hand he is unequivocally a Very Bad Man and probably past redeeming, but on the other, I hate a gloomy ending and I like to think his experiences might have changed him.
> 
> So I'll let myself off the hook and let you decide :D. Thanks for reading.


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